Continuation Part Eight: Discussion of the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case

[Dan O.]

Curious, I work nights a lot so I have to sleep during the day. As a result, I turn my phone onto vibrate. I believe I did that even in 2007. Is it common practice to shut ones phone off to avoid calls?

In no way is this an argument for guilt though, just wondering if I missed something?

Perhaps by coming late to the party you missed the whole guilter chant of the phones being turned off at the same time.

 

[Desert Fox]

Oh, I completely agree. I was just pointing out that the incompetence of the forensic police was the limiting factor here. Assuming that Meredith was attacked by three people in that small room, the probability that the forensic police failed to find DNA evidence from the extra two people because they accidentally destroyed it dominates the probability that it didn't actually exist at all.

Why did the prosecution refused to DNA test the probable semen stain?
If it was Raffaele's, I would be almost certainly consider him to have been involved at least.

Still, I would argue that if they were involved in a fight with the blood involved, I think the evidence would be so obvious that one could not hide it.

 

[Desert Fox]

Perhaps by coming late to the party you missed the whole guilter chant of the phones being turned off at the same time.

If I was going to try to use the phones to cover my involvement, I would have left them at Raffaele's house on. The quick and dirty assumption is likely to be you are where your phone is after all.

 

[Bill Williams]

And the above makes it hard to believe that they were planting evidence. It would have been so easy to "find" a lttle blood at Raf's. Since by the time they had search warrants, they knew they had nothing. Why not plant it then?

This is why it s difficult to conceive of a wide ranging conspiracy to frame the pair... which is not to say that perhaps in one or two cases didn't actually happen.

The "framers" themselves would not call it framing, they would think of it as convicting the guilty, and having some fabricated evidence just to help it along - to achieve the result they already know should be.

And then again, their first strategy, once nothing came back against Raffaele except for dodgy DNA on a bra-hook, was to keep him in solitary confinement until he delivered Knox for them. It meant that at that point in their "game", they couldn't implicate Sollecito TOO much: if Raffaele had broken in solitary, it would have been Mignini himself pointing to the 3 unknown DNA profiles on the clasp as proof of contamination!

It's as Desert Fox says about the Massei report....

I keep being struck by what he quoted. . . .By his own motivations report, you can just eliminate Amanda and Raffaele and the story is pretty much the same.

It is completely arguable that Mignini himself was keeping the "theory open" while Raffaele was in solitary.... because if Sollecito had cracked, Mignini would have had to go easy on him, like he'd done on Rudy Guede....

... about whom if you remove Knox and Sollecito completely, the body of evidence still pretty much points to him as the sole murderer.

And he'll be walking the streets soon.

 

[sunmaster14]

And the above makes it hard to believe that they were planting evidence. It would have been so easy to "find" a lttle blood at Raf's. Since by the time they had search warrants, they knew they had nothing. Why not plant it then?

Right, but planting evidence would have required an explicit conspiracy, which could have been exposed by even one honest policeman, and I suspect that the majority (even the vast majority) of Perugia policemen are honest. However, fallacious logic does not require a conspiracy. The prosecutor can order the police to keep testing and testing and testing until something is found. This is not obviously dishonest, and no honest policeman would object. And yet it is dishonest because the probability of finding a false sample positive is greater than zero, and true sample negatives are ignored.

I believe if they hadn't found RS's DNA on the bra clasp hook, they would have kept going back until they found it on something else.

 

[sunmaster14]

Why did the prosecution refused to DNA test the probable semen stain?

I think they were afraid that Stefanoni's rigorous procedures might lead to a determination that it came from Amanda Knox.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

whatever the story line asks for

Furthermore, it is illogical that a putative stager would not think to distribute the glass first, and ransack the room afterwards. Only a moron would invert the natural temporal flow.}

sunmaster14,

That is the great utility of the Amanda puppet. She can be brilliant at times, throwing the investigation off track, but then she can be amazingly stupid, when the story line requires it.

 

[Samson]

Right, but planting evidence would have required an explicit conspiracy, which could have been exposed by even one honest policeman, and I suspect that the majority (even the vast majority) of Perugia policemen are honest. However, fallacious logic does not require a conspiracy. The prosecutor can order the police to keep testing and testing and testing until something is found. This is not obviously dishonest, and no honest policeman would object. And yet it is dishonest because the probability of finding a false sample positive is greater than zero, and true sample negatives are ignored.

I believe if they hadn't found RS's DNA on the bra clasp hook, they would have kept going back until they found it on something else.[/w witnesses ]

ETA below is my effort, did something wrong with sunmaster14's sorry.

Planting remains a viable theory, just Mignini and Steffanoni required. All the evidence is essentially manufactured.
The staging, the witnesses Nara, Toto, Quintavalle. The time of death. The confession. The alibi breaking in the Sollecito Knox sequence pre arrest. The multiple perpetrators. The knife (use of LCN dna).
In my understanding of the case all this is manufactured by one means or another.
I well remember Arthur Allan Thomas
quote

A Royal Commission of Inquiry was established, headed by retired New South Wales Justice Robert Taylor. This declared Thomas to have been wrongfully charged and convicted, and found that among other improprieties, police had planted a .22 rifle cartridge case in the garden of the house where the murders were committed. The case was found four months and ten days after the area had already been subjected to one of the most intensive police searches ever undertaken. The cartridge case was said to have come from a rifle belonging to Thomas. However, the police tested only 64 rifles in an area where this weapon was common and found that two – including the one belonging to Thomas – could have fired the cartridge case found in the garden. This was the link to the deaths of the Crewes although it was later admitted that the case was "clean" and uncorroded when found. As such, the condition of the case was inconsistent with having lain in the garden, exposed to weather and dirt for more than four months.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

that makes sense, so in this case, it doesn't

If I was going to try to use the phones to cover my involvement, I would have left them at Raffaele's house on. The quick and dirty assumption is likely to be you are where your phone is after all.

Desert Fox,

No fair using logic.

 

[Samson]

Here is what must be contended with, this just now from across the way.

Popper wrote:
this case is so easy I wonder sometimes why they keep talking ... ak's and rg's admissions with a couple of significant contradictions (here we have many more than that) are enough to convict without dna work.

 

[Desert Fox]

Right, but planting evidence would have required an explicit conspiracy, which could have been exposed by even one honest policeman, and I suspect that the majority (even the vast majority) of Perugia policemen are honest. However, fallacious logic does not require a conspiracy. The prosecutor can order the police to keep testing and testing and testing until something is found. This is not obviously dishonest, and no honest policeman would object. And yet it is dishonest because the probability of finding a false sample positive is greater than zero, and true sample negatives are ignored.

I believe if they hadn't found RS's DNA on the bra clasp hook, they would have kept going back until they found it on something else.

The thing that strains credibility is the fact that four (or five) hard drives managed to be be fried by the police. That is close to as many hard drives as I have had die in 20+ years of owning computers and dozens of drives. In all that time, I have managed to only actually fry one drive, most just died a natural death.

Even if they did not plant evidence, it sure seems like they actively worked to eliminate exonerating evidence.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

The dark side of the moon

Here is what must be contended with, this just now from across the way.

Popper wrote:
this case is so easy I wonder sometimes why they keep talking ... ak's and rg's admissions with a couple of significant contradictions (here we have many more than that) are enough to convict without dna work.

Consider the following hypothetical. The police suspect someone of a crime. He is not in his right mind, and asserts that at the time of the crime, he was on the dark side of the moon. Does that alone make him guilty, or does the state have to use evidence to put him at the scene of the crime, etc.? As far as I am concerned, Amanda and Raffaele could be the biggest liars in the world, but that would never be enough on its own to convict them.

 

[Desert Fox]

Here is what must be contended with, this just now from across the way.

Popper wrote:
this case is so easy I wonder sometimes why they keep talking ... ak's and rg's admissions with a couple of significant contradictions (here we have many more than that) are enough to convict without dna work.

Honesty compels me to admit that I believe in AK and RG's innocence.
I think that given the right evidence, I would change my mind.
Still, one might be able to argue that I am too biased for them to be objective.

The trouble is that I just cannot see the prosecution case at all.
It seems like they are working from a Presuppositional position.
"They are guilty, there all evidence has to fit that point of view."

 

[Desert Fox]

Consider the following hypothetical. The police believe suspect someone of a crime. He is not in his right mind, and asserts that at the time of the crime, he was on the dark side of the moon. Does that alone make him guilty, or does the state have to use evidence to put him at the scene of the crime, etc.? As far as I am concerned, Amanda and Raffaele could be the biggest liars in the world, but that would never be enough on its own to convict them.

I give a great example of this:
I don't think that Cameron Todd Willingham was a very nice person.
Given enough time, he very well might have beaten his wife to death
The problem is that the evidence of him murdering his children in a fire is just not there.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Willingham and Leiterman might not be ideal neighbors

I give a great example of this:
I don't think that Cameron Todd Willingham was a very nice person.
Given enough time, he very well might have beaten his wife to death
The problem is that the evidence of him murdering his children in a fire is just not there.

That's a good example, although some say his wife gave as good as she got. Not that I am condoning violence in a marriage, whether it is one-way or two-way. Gary Leiterman is another example, from the world of DNA contamination.

 

[RWVBWL]

I was so smoked...

<snip>
Raffaele's flat was searched without a warrant because Raffaele invited them in. Technically this was an illegal search since Raffaele at the time was required to have legal representation. But in Raffaele's case at least they had evidence they could take before a judge: they had his shoe prints in blood in the murder room, they had a bloody footprint on the bath mat that they claimed was compatible and they had his pocket knife which matched the characteristics of what the police had told the press the day before was the probable murder weapon.

Hi Dan O.,
I recently saw this again from an early Perugia Shock post back on Nov. 8, 2007

Raffaele Sollecito questioned:
Q: Why you still had a knife?
A: I was so smoked that when they've taken me to questura I didn't take it away from my jacket.

Did Raffaele go to the Questura and get interrogated on the night
of Nov. 5th while stoned?

If so,
was Amanda stoned too that night?

Link:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100807000507/http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html

Oh ya,
there's an early Lumumba mention of the text message too in the same post:
Patrick Diya Lumumba questioned:
Q: The night of the crime did you send her an sms?
A: I send her a message of not to come because there wasn't enough people. She writes me at 20:18 "we meet". I respond at 20:40 "See you later", but was a generic "see you later", like tomorrow.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Here is what must be contended with, this just now from across the way.

Popper wrote:
this case is so easy I wonder sometimes why they keep talking ... ak's and rg's admissions with a couple of significant contradictions (here we have many more than that) are enough to convict without dna work.

How stupid. They are pretending that pointless trivia is evidence of murder. Look over on her blog. They asked her about shuffling on the bathmat and got her to say something that is slightly different from what she testified. Oh boy oh boy. It's gotta mean she stuck a knife in her roommate's throat the previous night.

Meanwhile they ignore the evidence that explains what actually happened.

 

[Desert Fox]

That's a good example, although some say his wife gave as good as she got. Not that I am condoning violence in a marriage, whether it is one-way or two-way. Gary Leiterman is another example, from the world of DNA contamination.

I want to address that in part. . . .

If the couple is into kink, I have no problems with that. I don't see it as the same thing but others might.

I kind of worry if it would have been even worse if Amanda was Wiccan, into the goth scene, or something else.

I actually would like to see somebody interview her on what the Italian prison system is like for a non believer. How did the other inmates treat her non belief.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

That's a good example, although some say his wife gave as good as she got. Not that I am condoning violence in a marriage, whether it is one-way or two-way. Gary Leiterman is another example, from the world of DNA contamination.

Gary "Polaroid" Leiterman...

 

[Samson]

How stupid. They are pretending that pointless trivia is evidence of murder. Look over on her blog. They asked her about shuffling on the bathmat and got her to say something that is slightly different from what she testified. Oh boy oh boy. It's gotta mean she stuck a knife in her roommate's throat the previous night.

Meanwhile they ignore the evidence that explains what actually happened.

By the way unimportant, but he does mean Amanda and Rudy in his post, saying they are the two admitting to be there.
If Popper is claiming to represent Karl Popper in his pseudonym, I would be pretty amazed,
quote from wiki
He is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century

I knew some people who worked with him in NZ, so I am curious.