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

[Anode]

After the Supreme Court of Italy saying that the accusation against Lumumba could not be used against Sollecito and Knox, Nencini ruled that the accusation was indispensible for understanding the crime:

​

See: http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/29/world/europe/italy-amanda-knox/index.html?hpt=hp_inthenews

Nencini also returns to Mixed blood/DNA.... acc. to this CNN report.

She did retract it within 24 hours in a written statement. She "doubts the veracity etc..." Right?


ETA: My post was with regards to this quote:

Quote:
The judge also reasoned that Knox's false accusation of her former boss, Patrick Lumumba, whom she accused of the killing the night she was arrested, proved her guilt.
Lumumba spent nearly two weeks in prison without Knox correcting her false accusation. He was released when Guede was arrested after his fingerprints were found in at the murder scene.
Nencini wrote that the accusation against Lumumba was "indispensable in understanding the crime" and that the accusation "cannot be separated from the murder."

 

[Diocletus]

In post 4760 by Diocletus, there's a picture of an annular blood droplet, can someone enlighten me as to where it came from?
Is it evidence from this case or is it being used as an example?
Because if you go to picture 35 of this slideshow they look remarkably similar.

It's an example. There was a follow-up post that explained that I posted it because it looks just like the rings found on the outside steps.

BTW, did you see pic. no. 33 in your collection? Sweet Jesus.

 

[Samson]

Some would consider the perp's DNA on the handle of the murder weapon, and the victim'd DNA on the pointy end, to be evidence.

Unless there was a conspiracy...

William of Occam was a sage man. He likes the simple theory of this crime.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

I am not buying the diary as incriminating evidence, anyway

Nadeau at CNN wrote, "He wrote that some evidence, including a prison diary Knox wrote in the early days of her incarceration, was used [by the first appellate court] to support her innocence when it was 'convenient, but at the same time devalued when she incriminated herself.'" So Knox's diary is evidence, but the second memoriale is totally forgotten, and yet the Hellmann court is the one with an "absence of logic rigor?" And it is unclear to me what is supposedly incriminating in the diary. Nencini is a petty functionary, and he isn't even a very smart one.

 

[Grinder]

The Nencini court has finally confirmed the end of the Lone Wolf "theory". He has confirmed that Sollecito's kitchen knife was used in the attack. Sollecito will be in prison before the conclusion of this year and Knox will be back in prison by the end of the following year.

Bongiorno knew the Lone Wolf "theory" was on its last legs after Hellmann was correctly rejected by Cassation. That's why she so desperately tried to decouple Sollecito from the Knox albatross.

It's over.

Sorry Grinder, this makes no sense. If two courts find someone innocent, for two mutually exclusive reasons, that is one thing. For two courts to find someone guilty for two mutually contradictory reasons (not exactly the parallel here, so don't get me wrong) that is quite another.

Nice try.

Bill and Stilicho both attack.

Stil it's not over and probably never will be. The Nencini court rubber-stamped the ISC. I thought she was criticized by Nencini for not decoupling.

Bill - they aren't for mutually contradictory reasons - the details are different.

 

[Samson]

Barbie Nadeau has found this

The court also scoffed at certain rulings laid out by the first appellate court, saying that the court’s reasoning that it would have been easy for “a young athlete” like Rudy Guede to scale the wall and enter the apartment, was borderline racist.

It sounds a little post modern to me.

 

[codyjuneau]

Any chance you can point to that 'whistle blowing letter'?

I'm convinced the lab results are 'too good to be true', on the two pieces of evidence they need to ensnare, one for Raf and one for Amanda.

The 'luck of the finds' seems too improbable. The knife has no likelihood of connection to the crime when selected, and the bra clasp is found 6 weeks later.

They must know they're gaming the lab results, the only question is how they're doing it.

Maybe its hard for publicly known scientific experts to comment on this possibility, by virtue of Italy's calumnia laws, and the prosecution's demonstrated penchant for using them to silence critics.

.
I am pretty sure that when the knife was selected the prosecution team was theorizing a planned premeditated murder. Mignini was speculating the murder was a sacrificial rite planned for All Saint's Day but postponed to the day after. So when the police officer intuited the knife at Raf's kitchen, he did so thinking there could be a semi logical connection to the crime.

But a premeditated murder had problems once Lumumba was no longer in the picture. With Lumumba in the picture they could argue Amanda's boss Lumumba was in on the plan so Amanda knew beforehand she would not have to go to work that night. Now switch Lumumba to Rudy and the only logical conclusion is that Amanda really did plan to go to work that night, rather than perform a murder.

To solve this problem the first trial convicted them of a NON premeditated murder. In order to explain why the intuited knife was at the cottage despite no premeditation, Massei reasoned(?) that Amanda must have been carrying this large kitchen knife (which did not fit the knife print on the bed sheet BTW) in her handbag for protection.

If you think about it, the police were locked into using the intuited knife. If they had not, they would have had to explain why they had 'intuited' a single knife at Raf's place, and found a trace amount of Meredith's DNA on it, even though it was not involved in the crime.
.

 

[Bill Williams]

Bill and Stilicho both attack.

Stil it's not over and probably never will be. The Nencini court rubber-stamped the ISC. I thought she was criticized by Nencini for not decoupling.

Bill - they aren't for mutually contradictory reasons - the details are different.

Some details are different, true. I thought I'd covered that with the.... "not exactly the parallel here, so don't get me wrong," apparently not.

Nencini is back on mixed-blood/mixed DNA in the bathroom. It seems that Nencini is reasoning that Conti & Vecchiotti is now non-existent and that Stefanoni, like Massei ruled, should be trusted on her say-so.

I do not know what you mean, "I thought she was criticized by Nencini for not decoupling." What does that mean?

 

[Bill Williams]

Barbie Nadeau has found this

The court also scoffed at certain rulings laid out by the first appellate court, saying that the court’s reasoning that it would have been easy for “a young athlete” like Rudy Guede to scale the wall and enter the apartment, was borderline racist.

It sounds a little post modern to me.

Ah..... the race card, dealt from the bottom of the deck. Good for Barbie.

 

[kwill]

Barbie Nadeau has found this

The court also scoffed at certain rulings laid out by the first appellate court, saying that the court’s reasoning that it would have been easy for “a young athlete” like Rudy Guede to scale the wall and enter the apartment, was borderline racist.

Seriously? Nencini concluded that Guede was subtly being called a monkey or something?

Dear god, this case is one never-ending mind-boggling train of lunacy.

He did in fact go into the flat through that window, because he wanted the rent money and because it was easy.

 

[Grinder]

Some would consider the perp's DNA on the handle of the murder weapon, and the victim'd DNA on the pointy end, to be evidence.

Unless there was a conspiracy...

The DNA on a knife from the kitchen in she had been staying for the last 4 days exclusively and for a week before that consistently isn't really evidence of anything.

If one were to accept the DNA of Meredith as coming from the murder sans blood not withstanding, it would be more likely that it was used by someone else that cleaned his DNA off of it and left it for someone else to use.

The bigger question should be: why wasn't Raf's DNA on the knife?

 

[Grinder]

There we have it.

To repeat, Rudy's process was a fast-track, meaning that the trial phase was missing. All "evidence" therefore was the result of stipulations agreed to by Rudy's side and Mignini.

Without Sollecito or Knox represented. They were convicted at a trial Nencini did not preside over.

Stilicho, over to you.

Fast-track Trial

The giudizio abbreviato (fast-track trial, literally abbreviated or short proceeding) consists, basically, of proceedings where the trial phase is absent.

It is the Judge of the Preliminary Hearing who, according to the evidence gathered, during the preliminary investigations by the prosecutor and by the lawyer during the defensive investigations, if there were any, convicts or acquits the defendant.

Since this is a reduction of the defendant's rights (he basically gives up his right to presenting new evidence and to be tried by a Judge of the Trial), it must be he who asks that the Judge of the Preliminary Hearing hand down a judgment on him.

http://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=26794

Bill it would seem that you are misrepresenting how the FT works. Shocking. I tell you just shocking.

Not all FTs result in convictions.

 

[Bill Williams]

The comments section on the CNN.COM webpage are about 99% against The Nencini court.... my favourite is this one, and no, it was not mine! The strange, compelling thing about this case is the almost total reversal of public opinion since 2007.......:

What did they base their "argument over money" motive on since it wasn't even argued by the prosecutor? Do Nencini and the jury have some type of psychic powers to know what went on in Kercher's room when she was murdered? They still don't have a trace of physical evidence or DNA that places Knox in the room. Isn't that strange since they also decided today that Knox and Solelcito are the ones who did the killing and not Guede? How could Knox have slashed Kercher's throat and left no mixed DNA in the room?​

 

[Bill Williams]

Fast-track Trial

The giudizio abbreviato (fast-track trial, literally abbreviated or short proceeding) consists, basically, of proceedings where the trial phase is absent.

It is the Judge of the Preliminary Hearing who, according to the evidence gathered, during the preliminary investigations by the prosecutor and by the lawyer during the defensive investigations, if there were any, convicts or acquits the defendant.

Since this is a reduction of the defendant's rights (he basically gives up his right to presenting new evidence and to be tried by a Judge of the Trial), it must be he who asks that the Judge of the Preliminary Hearing hand down a judgment on him.

http://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=26794

Bill it would seem that you are misrepresenting how the FT works. Shocking. I tell you just shocking.

Not all FTs result in convictions.

Grinder.... how does this differ form what I've been presenting? If anything, you're presenting a more sinister version of what a Fast-Track trial is....

.... the defendant gives up the right to challenge ANY evidence presented, through the presentation of additional evidence.

True, I may have been misrepresenting it, I am not a lawyer, nor an Italian lawyer. I am seeking understanding here, and if you have it and I don't, go for it..... your version is actually more sinister. It means that Amanda and Raffaele were convicted at a "trial" where ONLY Mignini was allowed to present "evidence".

 

[Grinder]

The Nencini court has finally confirmed the end of the Lone Wolf "theory". He has confirmed that Sollecito's kitchen knife was used in the attack. Sollecito will be in prison before the conclusion of this year and Knox will be back in prison by the end of the following year.

Bongiorno knew the Lone Wolf "theory" was on its last legs after Hellmann was correctly rejected by Cassation. That's why she so desperately tried to decouple Sollecito from the Knox albatross.

It's over.

Some details are different, true. I thought I'd covered that with the.... "not exactly the parallel here, so don't get me wrong," apparently not.

Nencini is back on mixed-blood/mixed DNA in the bathroom. It seems that Nencini is reasoning that Conti & Vecchiotti is now non-existent and that Stefanoni, like Massei ruled, should be trusted on her say-so.

I do not know what you mean, "I thought she was criticized by Nencini for not decoupling." What does that mean?

Read Stil's comment above.

 

[Bill Williams]

This is a translation of the conclusion of Nencini's report, which demonstrates in the most bald way the reverse of a normal burden of proof.

"The affirmation of the criminal responsibility of the defendants of the crime ascribed to them can be reached only if there is no reasonably reliable explanation other than that which emerged in the investigation, that of their personal involvement in the crime. Doubt over the significance of the circumstantial evidence that would justify an acquittal of the defendants must be reasonable, and not just a hypothesis unsupported by any objective evidence. The truth that emerges from the probative picture must be ascertained by the exclusion of any reasonable explanation of their cause that is different than the involvement of the defendants".​

Nencini is saying that it is not up to the prosecutor to defeat "reasonable doubt" in manufacturing a conviction....

.... it is now up to the defence, or an acquitting judge, to defeat reasonable doubt in a prosecutor's case, or in the ruling of a lower court.

In a sense, Nencini is saying that the one who acquits must use "objective evidence," whereas all the prosecutor needs to have (cf. Micheli) is a reasonable, logical hypothesis even if it is devoid of evidence.

How does a defence find evidence, if it is no longer up to the prosecution to provide any?

There you have it. The definition of "osmosis" as applied to this case.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Let's do the Time Warp

Elsewhere someone who has read a portion of the document said that it claims that Raffaele called the Carabinieri after the Postal Police had arrived. Another person read that there are supposedly bloody footprints of size 37 in Meredith's room. A third person read that Meredith's body was moved. It as if we are in a time warp taking us back to 2008.

 

[Strozzi]

and to add....

"If AK took the money why was Rudy's DNA in MK's purse, and NOT Amandas?"

Must be the super-intelligent Italian Judicial System Logic at work again.

There is a simple explanation why Guede's DNA is on the purse and none of Amanda's is on it, when the prosecution KNOWS that Amanda must have taken the money (otherwise, we get no (version 5) motive). Amanda must have cleaned all her DNA off the purse using her handy-dandy DNA cleaning apparatus and left Guede's DNA where her DNA should have been.

 

[Bill Williams]

I do not know what you mean, "I thought she was criticized by Nencini for not decoupling." What does that mean?

Read Stil's comment above.

Ok, now I get it.

I guess now that Stilicho is back we're going to have to go around THAT merry-go-round again. On the face of it, the two of them decoupling their cases is logical.

What marred them with Massei's court, as per Barbie Nadeau's analysis, was that, "The prosecution's case was weak, but the defences' cases were weaker." Nadeau said that the reason why Mignini's prosecution was preferred by Massei's court wasn't because of it's strength, but because the two defences' cases were not coordinated.

So they got coordinated, and even had Bongiorni (in fromt of Hellmann) making copious reference to why Knox was innocent, not just her own client.

For the Florence Court it is my sense (I wasn't there, and wouldn't understand Italian even if there) that Bongiorno went back to defending her own client, Raffaele.

Everyone, including many Raffaele and Amanda defenders went ga-ga thinking that Bongiorno was doing this to throw Amanda under a bus, to save her client Raffaele.

That turned out not to be true. Stilicho thinks it's true, but as you say, given Nencini's remarks after trial, he thought that if all of a sudden Raffaele ratted out Amanda, then magically all the previous "evidence" convicting Raffaele would suddenly disappear and he might have things, "go better for him".

It is interesting reading the (few) news reports about Nencini's motivations. CNN's comments section is running 99-1 in favour of Knox/Sollecito, with comments like, "What the hell's wrong with Italy?"

Or, "I thought this was about sex? Now it's about money? What happened to all the so-called 'evidence' presented earlier that this was about sex or at least about sex-rituals?"

People seem to be catching on.

 

[Grinder]

Bill Williams

Posted by Grinder View Post
Fast-track Trial

The giudizio abbreviato (fast-track trial, literally abbreviated or short proceeding) consists, basically, of proceedings where the trial phase is absent.

It is the Judge of the Preliminary Hearing who, according to the evidence gathered, during the preliminary investigations by the prosecutor and by the lawyer during the defensive investigations, if there were any, convicts or acquits the defendant.
Since this is a reduction of the defendant's rights (he basically gives up his right to presenting new evidence and to be tried by a Judge of the Trial), it must be he who asks that the Judge of the Preliminary Hearing hand down a judgment on him.

http://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=26794

Bill it would seem that you are misrepresenting how the FT works. Shocking. I tell you just shocking.

Not all FTs result in convictions.

Grinder.... how does this differ form what I've been presenting? If anything, you're presenting a more sinister version of what a Fast-Track trial is....

.... the defendant gives up the right to challenge ANY evidence presented, through the presentation of additional evidence.

True, I may have been misrepresenting it, I am not a lawyer, nor an Italian lawyer. I am seeking understanding here, and if you have it and I don't, go for it..... your version is actually more sinister. It means that Amanda and Raffaele were convicted at a "trial" where ONLY Mignini was allowed to present "evidence".

From my reading the evidence isn't stipulated to but rather limited. The prosecution presents their case with what they brought to the preliminary hearing (or whatever they call it) and the defense presents what they found before calling for the fast track.