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

[Grinder]

Perhaps then the whole thing needs to be evaluated osmotically. The Conti-Vecchiotti report, regardless of its legal status, establishes that DNA evidence cannot support a conviction. For a host of reasons.

Osmotically combined with the digestion and phone evidence, we're getting fairly near a slam dunk not just for not guilty, but for (as Judge Hellmann said) complete innocence.

Now you're talking

In fact that's how I would argue it in the appeal, really.

They could even through in the part about the later she ate the more likely she died earlier

Now I can imagine the Italians saying again that she lived until 11:30 which just didn't happen.

It will be interesting to see if Nencini puts a TOD in the motivations - 6 days to go.

Over on the dark side they are now posting the lovely kitschy photoshops prepared by their own talented "artists" and are tweeting the link out.

This should solidify their standing with the press.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

MSFT?

ETA - If anyone has a better translation of the girls' testimony than my translation by MSFT I'd appreciate the link. The one from Amanda's page is hard to read but certainly gives an insight (or incite) to the defense thinking.

What is MSFT?

 

[acbytesla]

What is MSFT?

Microsoft???

 

[Desert Fox]

I cannot remember if it has been posted here, but in Sept 2013 Carla Vecchiotti (yes THAT Carla Vecchiotti) said this very thing - in Italy it is beyond a reasonable doubt that operates.

http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fgene.2013.00177/full#B11
​

I have read other material on this issue and was pretty sure that I was understanding it correctly but still a bit ambiguously worded.
This though is solidly worded in a way I am sure I understand.
Glad I don't seem to be misunderstanding the issues.

 

[Dan O.]

Dan O. The Massei report is wrong about the nature of the attack.

Does anybody at all with actual knowledge say that the shirts were not "rolled"?

 

[JREF2010]

You don't convict based on convict on "could" if you have a fair justice system.

Didnt Massei convict on 80 or 800, "probable's"?

This goofball-trial and retarded logic is embarrassing.

Imagine those jurors and Nencini, in a room, deciding a verdict, like pretend experts...there's some real insanity to it all.

 

[acbytesla]

It was just penile penetration when I studied criminal law but now I think it's what you said. It doesn't really matter what word we use. Guede's DNA showed up on the vaginal swab and it's just ridiculous of Dan to be suggesting that happened accidentally.

Did he really suggest that Rudy's DNA happened to be found on or in her vagina accidentally? I'm sure he meant something else.. Right Dan??

 

[Desert Fox]

Didnt Massei convict on 80 or 800, "probable's"?

This goofball-trial and retarded logic is embarrassing.

Imagine those jurors and Nencini, in a room, deciding a verdict, like pretend experts...there's some real insanity to it all.

Mark Crislip with medical issues has said that the plural of anecdotes is not data.
You cannot through a bunch of crap together and call it data.
That is what we seem to have here.

 

[Bruce Fischer]

Does anybody at all with actual knowledge say that the shirts were not "rolled"?

The photographic evidence does not show any unusual "rolling" that would lead anyone to think that Meredith's body was not intentionally exposed. Meredith's clothing was pushed up in an unorganized fashion, meaning that it is not noticeably rolled or folded in any way to suggest that it was not intentionally pushed or pulled up.

Photographic evidence also shows that Meredith's clothing was manipulated by investigators at the scene. One image shows the shirts pushed up higher on Meredith's left side than on her right side with the shirts partially covering her right breast. In another image the shirts are pushed further up on the right side, fully exposing her right breast. Looking at photos alone will not tell us exactly how Meredith's clothing looked before investigators arrived at the scene.

Meredith's bra was ripped off of her body. There is clear evidence that her attacker wanted to expose her breasts.

Rudy Guede sexually assaulted Meredith Kercher. Period. The entire attack is repulsive. This is why it irritates me to see you here dreaming up a ridiculous theory that Meredith's clothes just happened to come off and that Guede's thumb accidentally slipped into Meredith's body. The evidence shows very clearly that Meredith was brutally murdered and sexually assaulted. The evidence at the scene points to Rudy Guede. His DNA was found inside of Meredith's body. This is irrefutable evidence.

 

[Bruce Fischer]

Did he really suggest that Rudy's DNA happened to be found on or in her vagina accidentally? I'm sure he meant something else.. Right Dan??

No, Dan has repeated several times now that he believes it was an accident.

 

[Bruce Fischer]

The Massei report says "rolled". We know this happened before she stopped breathing. Can you roll two t-shirts while holding a knife and trying to control your victim at the same time? If she is already on her back you have to lift her up in order to roll the shirts. You could prop her buttox up on the pillow to raise the back and allow the t-shirts to be rolled. But then how was the bra removed?

The easy way to get a rolled t-shirt is if Meredith is lying on her back and the jacket is pulled out from under her or she is pulled by her feet across the floor (happens all the time on carpet, not sure if it works on tile). This would have the distinct characteristic of the back of the shirt being rolled tighter than the front. If we had access to the rest of the photos we might be able to confirm or refute that it happened this way.

I explained the position of the shirts looking from the front in my previous post. Meredith lost the ability to defend herself before she stopped breathing. She lost a great deal of blood. Guede did not have to continue fighting Meredith as she lay dying. She was powerless to stop Guede from violating her.

The back of her shirts could have rolled a bit from being dragged but it would have had no bearing on the fact that her shirts were pushed up as they were in the front to expose her body. We are also looking at a very short distance. Meredith would have needed to be dragged in a relatively straight line by her ankles for a decent distance to cause her shirts to roll up as you are describing. Meredith was not dragged in that manner. The blood evidence on the floor does not suggest that at all. Please take a look at Ron Hendry's work to view the photographs.


Why are you trying so hard to defend Guede?

 

[Grinder]

Didnt Massei convict on 80 or 800, "probable's"?

This goofball-trial and retarded logic is embarrassing.

Imagine those jurors and Nencini, in a room, deciding a verdict, like pretend experts...there's some real insanity to it all.

Well that's a bit of a canard. I think our local expert says its 37 but most of them come from expert testimony. For eample:

Then, he observed, the weight of the body must also be used. Dr. Lalli had guessed at a weight of 55 kilos, obtaining a Gaussian (bell) curve whose centre indicated the time of 22:50 pm as the most probable time of death, with the "range of times of death lying between 21:30 pm and 03:30 am the following day" (page 12 of the transcripts).​

It is also the case that the requirement for the motivations basically forces best guesses as to what happened.

Here it's just guilty or not guilty - no explanations.

here's another probably:

While she was studying, Filomena returned with her boyfriend. They asked about Meredith and she reported that she probably was still sleeping. She helped them wrap a gift for a party. At that point, Meredith had gotten up and had greeted her, asking her how the Halloween party had been.​

I think criticizing the probables or could haves or any conditional is a red herring.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

It would be nice if people would read the girls' testimony. They most likely didn't finish the movie from Robin's description (I think it was Robin).

It's been a long time, but I guess I could dig up all the primary sources again. However I have the distinct recollection that it was very clear when you put all the narratives together that they ate the pizza before watching the movie.

Also I'm reflexively suspicious of this "most likely" business - if they did not finish watching the movie, why didn't they all say so? Why are you left to try to construe a "most likely" from someone's testimony? If you can point me to your exact source I will take a look but it sounds like you're trying very hard to misconstrue the facts.

They started the pizza making before the movie but stopped it to eat. They arrived at around 4:30 so had plenty of time. The times are not known in any precise way.

Once again I'm pretty sure that several of us went over the best available evidence and concluded the exact opposite.

Why? How many pieces of pizza and apple crisp/crumble and ice cream did she eat?

It cannot be right that Meredith ate no pizza and half a litre of apple crumble, because the chyme in her stomach was consistent with semi-digested pizza. There were the remains of cheese and vegetables. Plus nobody eats half a litre of apple crumble. This idea of yours is just plain dumb and just plain wrong. You are ignoring simple facts because you don't like them.

I think I already have.

Currently, I do not. It seems like you want very badly to discredit the digestive system evidence, because you don't like the conclusion, but you don't have a very good grasp of what the digestive system evidence actually is. As such you are getting the cart before the horse.

As others have already said you are also attacking a straw man by saying that the digestive system evidence proves Knox and Sollecito are innocent. It alone does not. That plus the Naruto timestamp proves that Knox and Sollecito's involvement is staggeringly improbable and that no remotely sensible theory of the crime consistent with the known facts has ever been put forward, which ought to be enough for acquittal in any sane court system. That plus the additional computer forensics evidence does prove that they are innocent barring some truly baroque conspiracy scenario.

 

[acbytesla]

No, Dan has repeated several times now that he believes it was an accident.

If that is what he said Bruce, then I agree with you that he should walk that back. Rudy said that he "fingered" Meredith. So by his own admission he digitally penetrated Meredith. This is confirmed by Rudy's DNA on a vaginal swab and the condition of Meredith's body and clothes.

In the US if this was not consensual and I don't think anyone believes it was, then it is rape. Now of course the definition of rape was different in 2007...not sure what it was at that time. It would have definitely constituted sexual assault. What the definition is in Italy I do not know.

So, while I think Dan has a lot to offer and has done some great work on this case, (the Wiki is fantastic) he should reevaluate his thinking on this point.

 

[RandyN]

I explained the position of the shirts looking from the front in my previous post. Meredith lost the ability to defend herself before she stopped breathing. She lost a great deal of blood. Guede did not have to continue fighting Meredith as she lay dying. She was powerless to stop Guede from violating her.

The back of her shirts could have rolled a bit from being dragged but it would have had no bearing on the fact that her shirts were pushed up as they were in the front to expose her body. We are also looking at a very short distance. Meredith would have needed to be dragged in a relatively straight line by her ankles for a decent distance to cause her shirts to roll up as you are describing. Meredith was not dragged in that manner. The blood evidence on the floor does not suggest that at all. Please take a look at Ron Hendry's work to view the photographs.


Why are you trying so hard to defend Guede?

This is irrefutable. Once Guede made the mortal wound no further action on his part was necessary. I think he left her to bleed out closer to the wardrobe. The evidence seems to indicate that he then dragged her closer to the center of the room.

In fact his actions of rolling or turning her to remove clothing is about the only thing that could have kept her alive long enough to still be breathing and coughing once he finally placed her on her back. She then quickly drowned in her own blood.

The bra had to come off before this...in fact I think he dragged her by the back strap of the bra. Which caused it to separate at the seams where the clasp was sewn on. He reached down and picked her up by the back main strap...which gave way and thus allowed the clasp part to get under her meanwhile the rest of the bra was cast aside near her feet IIRC.

I agree that some piece of MK clothing could have been pulled off during the battle...most likely the blue outer jacket since it was inside out...or perhaps her jeans since they were fairly over-sized being the jeans of her English BF. But that was the extent of that I expect.

The blood evidence helps to determine what came off and when I think. Although this has been miserably understudied because like other important data the police simply botched it or ignored it. What else can explain the blue outer jacket left in the room...in the dirty clothing hamper? It was put there by the police certainly since the video and photos show it near the wardrobe earlier in Nov.

LJ...Grinder is playing again. Apple Crumble is exactly what we call Apple Crisp here. And baking raw apples would render them soft and stewed like...closer to sauce than crisp chunks of apple. The Crisp part is the sugar flour, butter mixture on top...the crumble = the crisp.

I cant think of a logical valid excuse for RG DNA to be accidentally inside MK body. It got there by consent or by force. The evidence seems to lean overwhelmingly towards force...seeing as MK ended up dead.

 

[Bill Williams]

Well that's a bit of a canard. I think our local expert says its 37 but most of them come from expert testimony.

'Twas 39.

I think criticizing the probables or could haves or any conditional is a red herring.

When considered osmotically, it's not. It's symptomatic of the style of thinking that leads to a conviction.

In contrast, Carlo Vecchiotti gets it right....

Finally, it is worth recalling a key principle of the Italian criminal justice system, the presumption of innocence: a defendant can only be declared guilty if the prosecution proves beyond any reasonable doubt that he committed the crimes for which he is being prosecuted. If a single doubt remains, even the slightest, the defendant must be acquitted. Judges who convict in the absence of strong, unambiguous and consistent evidence violate the law (Grosso, 2011).​

Probables for me falls into the ambiguous category. Your mileage will vary.

 

[Draca]

By the way, just for the sake of accuracy, the dessert Meredith ate was not an apple crisp. It was an apple crumble. It's a British dessert that's sort of equivalent to a cobbler. It consists of stewed fruit in a casserole dish (in this case apple), with a "crumble" of rubbed-together flour, sugar and butter sprinkled in a layer on top in a sort of gravel consistency.

LJ, you just described an Apple Crisp.
British crumble = American crisp

I use a mix of oatmeal, flour, cinnamon sugar and butter myself.

An American cobbler would have a dough based topping.

 

[JREF2010]

I think criticizing the probables or could haves or any conditional is a red herring.

410 or so yrs ago, I would agree with you. In Salem , Mass. right?

ex. John could have murdered someone, somewhere, for some unclear reason.
ex. The knife could be the murder weapon, though it wasn't cleaned and no blood was found on it.
ex. There probably was a budget crisis, so the interrogation couldn't be recorded, so it's probably fair to believe the polizia are probably telling the truth and the accused is lying. The accused has no proof they were treated unfairly, they have no records, no films, no recordings.
ex. The accused claim they were home, but they could have been across town murdering a friend.
ex. Raffaele will probably go to prison for a crime Rudy Guede committed.

 

[Dan O.]

Did he really suggest that Rudy's DNA happened to be found on or in her vagina accidentally? I'm sure he meant something else.. Right Dan??

What I said is what I meant. The condition of the bra suggests a particular way that it was pulled. One possibility that it suggests is an attempt to use the bra as a handle to lift Meredith's body. If the left hand is lifting Meredith's upper body by grabbing the bra strap, the right hand could be assisting this lift by grabbing her leg. If you cannot see how this works I suggest you find a willing subject and try it out yourself. Tell me what is wrong with this suggestion other than it doesn't have Rudy running in circles around Meredith like a crazed sex maniac.

 

[Dan O.]

speaking of insanity, did everyone remember to wear geans today?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denim_Day