Continuation Part 12: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Bill Williams]

The question is: why? Given that there was nothing wrong with what he did (she might have been still alive and in need or urgent assistance) why not say so? I suspect the fear was that the defence would then jump all over this and suggest it as a route for contamination.

I was not completely clear which side of the victim he walked around to check her out. In the end it looked like it was the right (window) side. Could he have acquired any blood on the soles of his shoes and transferred it elsewhere?

Forget Battistelli's testimony... there is absolutely NO reason for him to have shied away from admitting that he went in to do the decent thing, see if Meredith was still alive. There must be some other reason for him to lie in court.

The 118 forensic staff also entered on the afternoon of Nov 2, and did not have protective coverings on... this from Massei's motivations:

On the afternoon of November 2, 2007 personnel of the Perugia Police headquarters
went to said house. The 118 and Coroner Dr. Lalli also came; a few hours later, the
Forensics staff from Rome arrived.
They then proceeded to perform an initial review of the house; Forensics proceeded
with findings in their area of expertise that took up the afternoon, evening and the
night of November 2, 2007 and subsequent days until Sunday, November 5, 2007.
​

Monica Napoleoni, Deputy Commissioner of the State Police, arrived at the Via della
Pergola house around 13:30 pm, and colleagues of the postal police gave information
about the discovery of the body of a girl. Arriving almost at the same time as the
staff from 118, there was a female doctor and a nurse. In Romanelli's room, she saw
the break-in and glass "that had fallen on top of the stuff lying on the floor" (page
226). She approached Meredith’s room with the chief assistant Buratti, who
remained at the door as Napoleoni took one step inside the room "while the 118
doctor uncovered the corpse" (page 228, hearing [96] on February 27, 2009).
She was wearing shoe covers and sterile gloves. ‚I then saw this girl who was on the
floor with her face lying towards the right of the viewer, with a terrible wound. Was
semi-naked, had the t-shirt rolled up above the breast and lots of blood and spatters
of blood even on the breast‛ (page 229).

Everyone who entered had gloves and shoe covers on except the 118 personnel who certified the death. Soon afterwards, Dr. Chiacchiera and colleagues from the
Scientific Police arrived.
​

Maybe the 118 personnel certified the death from the hall.

 

[Planigale]

I cannot remember the names but I remember a case in England where a mother and child were attacked, the mother was killed but the child was seriously injured. The police treated the scene as a multiple murder, there was considerable delay until they realised the younger murder victim was still alive, they ended up paying damages for consequent brain injury. The outcome is the police are supposed to prioritise confirmation of death over preservation of the crime scene. I cannot condemn a police officer for immediately assessing the victim, it seems entirely appropriate. Saving life should take priority over the integrity of the crime scene.

 

[Numbers]

I cannot remember the names but I remember a case in England where a mother and child were attacked, the mother was killed but the child was seriously injured. The police treated the scene as a multiple murder, there was considerable delay until they realised the younger murder victim was still alive, they ended up paying damages for consequent brain injury. The outcome is the police are supposed to prioritise confirmation of death over preservation of the crime scene. I cannot condemn a police officer for immediately assessing the victim, it seems entirely appropriate. Saving life should take priority over the integrity of the crime scene.

Yes, I would think that would be the standard procedure among police and emergency responders (such as fire fighters and ambulance personnel).

 

[Numbers]

Inmate with more than 2 decades on death row freed _ for now

http://helenair.com/news/national/i...cle_e3fa4880-b3a5-5d3f-975b-ad58493e6dca.html
.....
In overturning Wright's conviction and death sentence, Parkins ruled in 2012 that a confession Wright gave to police during an interrogation lasting nearly 13 hours was defective because he had not been properly advised of his Miranda rights against self-incrimination and to have an attorney appointed for him. The confession was a linchpin for prosecutors at Wright's 1992 murder trial, and Wood has said it's unlikely that prosecutors would proceed with the case without the confession.

"The police extracted Mr. Wright's confession after 13 hours of interrogation in a windowless 13 x 10 room while handcuffed to a table," Mondros said in a written statement Friday. "Mr. Wright, who was 18 at the time, was under the influence of heroin and, as the Superior Court found, behaved bizarrely, a fact ignored by his interrogators.

"The result was a so-called confession that was factually inconsistent with the physical evidence and eyewitness accounts, and found wholly unreliable by the court."

Parkins also ruled in 2012 that Wright's case was prejudiced by the failure of the chief investigating officer to advise prosecutors, and thereby defense attorneys, of an attempted robbery at Brandywine Village Liquors, less than two miles from the Hi-Way Inn, about half an hour before Seifert was killed. Wright's attorneys have argued that such evidence might have exonerated him.

"The evidence of this close in time and proximity robbery supports a reasonable inference that the (Brandywine) perpetrators were also the Hi-Way Inn perpetrators, and thus that Wright was not involved in either crime," Justice Henry duPont Ridgely wrote in a dissenting opinion when the state Supreme Court reinstated Wright's conviction in 2013.

Following yet another appeal on issues defense attorneys said were left unresolved in its earlier decision, the Supreme Court sent the case back to Parkins, ruling unanimously last year that Wright was entitled to a new trial because prosecutors repeatedly withheld potentially exculpatory evidence.

 

[Rolfe]

I cannot remember the names but I remember a case in England where a mother and child were attacked, the mother was killed but the child was seriously injured. The police treated the scene as a multiple murder, there was considerable delay until they realised the younger murder victim was still alive, they ended up paying damages for consequent brain injury. The outcome is the police are supposed to prioritise confirmation of death over preservation of the crime scene. I cannot condemn a police officer for immediately assessing the victim, it seems entirely appropriate. Saving life should take priority over the integrity of the crime scene.

That would be the murders of Lin and Megan Russell (mother and daughter) while Josie Russell survived with serious brain injuries. It happened in Kent in 1996. Josie later made a remarkable recovery, and she and her father moved to Wales.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Stone_(murderer)

Michael Stone was convicted of the murders, but that's another case where there is considerable doubt as to whether they convicted the right man. The conviction relied on a jailhouse snitch.

Still, that's for another thread if anyone is interested. I didn't know Josie recovered damages from the police because they didn't realise she was still alive when they first attended the scene of the crime.

 

[Kestrel]

Didn't that Wikipedia article have to be completely rewritten by a senior editor because of the vandalism it had suffered? I remember because people thought she had done a good job on it (and because the editor in question, Slimvirgin, is someone I am constantly accused of being by my crazy stalker).

I would have thought the article would have been protected after that, but if it's open to any and all editing, God knows what's been twisted by now.

The article on the Kercher murder was cleaned up after the personal intervention of Jimbo, the founder of Wikipedia. He actually did some of the edits himself before turning the project over to another senior editor.

 

[Rolfe]

That's what I remember happening. I was tickled pink, because my mad stalker runs around the internet asserting that I and Linda Mack (who is Slimvirgin on Wikipedia and the senior editor who took over the Knox article) are one and the same. Linda Mack/Slimvirgin has a bit of a chequered background in Lockerbie activism, having (allegedly) lost a boyfriend on the flight. There's a weird CT surrounding all that.

Hearing about her having sorted out the Knox article was a strange full-circle thing.

 

[Strozzi]

Why Batistelli lied about entering Kercher's room

Altieri is the one who busted open the door to Kercher's room. Altieri repeatedly stated, including under cross-examination, that he saw Batistelli enter the room, step to the right of the duvet-covered victim, bend down and grasp an edge of the duvet to look at the body. At that instant Altieri said he turned and exited the cottage as Batistelli had ordered a moment earlier.

I believe Batistelli as an officer of the Postal Police had been instructed/trained to summon other police if he encountered a serious crime scene and to not disturb the scene. I think he told his superiors and other first-responder police that he had not entered the room, locked himself into that story, and thereafter could not admit to having entered the room (the right thing to do, imo) and lying to his superiors and other authorities.

Having given testimony against Batistelli's lie, I wonder what Altieri believes about Knox's claims of how she was dealt with by the police?

 

[Samson]

It is interesting to compare what the latest iteration of the Amanda Knox wikipedia entry has to say about Mignini

Quote:
In early 2002, Perugia prosecutor Giuliano Mignini charged 20 apparently respectable people with concealing a murder. Mignini was acting on the theory that a man, who had apparently died in a boating accident, was actually murdered and his body repeatedly switched with a lookalike by a secret society of Satanists responsible for serial killings.[13][14] The case was finally dismissed in 2010, by which time the 20 men indicted had been financially ruined.[15][16
End Quote

and Peter Quennell yesterday on TJMK

"Reportedly the vote for Dr Mignini was cast by Elector Andrea Lignani Marchesani the influential political leader of Umbria. He had declared that he wanted to devote an inscription vote to Prosecutor General Mignini to honor “his honesty, his independence and his standing up to intimidation from meddlesome forces”.

This mainly refers to Dr Mignini’s unyielding pushing ahead on the Narducci case, but he is also widely admired for refusing to be intimidated by the pro-Knox and pro-Sollecity forces. He is not active in politics."

 

[Kestrel]

Altieri is the one who busted open the door to Kercher's room. Altieri repeatedly stated, including under cross-examination, that he saw Batistelli enter the room, step to the right of the duvet-covered victim, bend down and grasp an edge of the duvet to look at the body. At that instant Altieri said he turned and exited the cottage as Batistelli had ordered a moment earlier.

I believe Batistelli as an officer of the Postal Police had been instructed/trained to summon other police if he encountered a serious crime scene and to not disturb the scene. I think he told his superiors and other first-responder police that he had not entered the room, locked himself into that story, and thereafter could not admit to having entered the room (the right thing to do, imo) and lying to his superiors and other authorities.

Checking that the victim was actually dead is what any reasonable person would have done. But perhaps Baristelli's world was filled with those who would rather an officer tell a simple lie than the more complicated truth.

 

[Machiavelli]

Unlike anyone else posting here, Machiavelli himself has access to the police and judges. If he actually believed what he was saying he would take the evidence we have presented here to the Italian authorities and bring back the official refutation if there was one.

I suspect however that Machiavelli knows exactly what kind of trouble he would cause for himself if he were to stir such a hornets nest.

There is no "evidence" presented by the pro-Knoxes here, but there is a series of claims by self-declared people informed about facts. Those self declared witnesses shall only bring their testimony to police or magistrates, if they believe their testimony is evidence of something.

It's absolutely false that this would bring a risk of a defamation charge. Halkudes and Zupancic have already committed a defamation; you don't commit defamation by bringing testimonies, you commit defamation by making false claims in public press conferences and articles. What you tell to the police or to a magistrate is confidential and can't be charged with defamation.

If you bring false testimony or submit false evidence to authorities you may commit calunnia instead, but only if you bring the false evidence maliciously, that means that you actually know that the evidence you are presenting is false and that the person is innocent.
Which is not what Halkides and Zupancic would do, I hope.

 

[Numbers]

On EDFs:

JUNE 2012
DNA for the Defense Bar

U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
810 Seventh Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20531

What should be requested from the lab?
1. A disk containing raw data, including but not limited to the sample files, project files, injection lists, sample sheets and injection logs.
Start by reviewing the injection lists, sample sheets and injection logs, noting the time and date stamps on all runs to check the order in which samples were run and to make sure that controls were not substituted with those from a different day. This could reveal a mistake or, in the most extreme circumstance, indicate laboratory fraud; in either case, conclusions based on the evidence and reference profiles would be unreliable. If it was an honest mistake, the lab should be able to provide data for the actual controls run on that day. If controls did not perform properly or were not run, conclusions based on the evidence and reference profiles would be considered invalid. A laboratory that follows the
Quality Assurance Standards for Forensic DNA Testing Laboratories (the QAS) — any laboratory that uses CODIS (Combined DNA Index System)
— is prohibited from using any testing results that are not supported by properly performing controls (Standard 9.5, July 1, 2009).
Note: If the injection logs and sample sheets do not match up, hire an expert to find out why. To make sure you know what you are looking for, you may want to hire an expert for at least one case — or attend a training class that addresses this topic.

 

[Machiavelli]

It is interesting to compare what the latest iteration of the Amanda Knox wikipedia entry has to say about Mignini

Quote:
In early 2002, Perugia prosecutor Giuliano Mignini charged 20 apparently respectable people with concealing a murder. Mignini was acting on the theory that a man, who had apparently died in a boating accident, was actually murdered and his body repeatedly switched with a lookalike by a secret society of Satanists responsible for serial killings.[13][14] The case was finally dismissed in 2010, by which time the 20 men indicted had been financially ruined.[15][16
End Quote

and Peter Quennell yesterday on TJMK

"Reportedly the vote for Dr Mignini was cast by Elector Andrea Lignani Marchesani the influential political leader of Umbria. He had declared that he wanted to devote an inscription vote to Prosecutor General Mignini to honor “his honesty, his independence and his standing up to intimidation from meddlesome forces”.

This mainly refers to Dr Mignini’s unyielding pushing ahead on the Narducci case, but he is also widely admired for refusing to be intimidated by the pro-Knox and pro-Sollecity forces. He is not active in politics."

The Wikipedia entry is just false. It's time for the Knox supporters to realize a bit of the truth of what the courts sentences actually say.

 

[Desert Fox]

The Wikipedia entry is just false. It's time for the Knox supporters to realize a bit of the truth of what the courts sentences actually say.

Have you ever listened to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe?
For example, Steve Novella discussed a recent letter he got from a person who was arguing with a creationist on Facebook. Steve explained where the creationist got his argument and why those arguments are wrong.

 

[Bill Williams]

The Wikipedia entry is just false. It's time for the Knox supporters to realize a bit of the truth of what the courts sentences actually say.

.... for example..... that Rudy Guede was such a professional burglar, that (acc. to Judge Nencini) he would never have staged a burglary to look exactly like the Perugian police would have expected, if he'd committed a real burglary through Filomena's window?

..... or like Judge Massei who said that Amanda and Meredith were friends?

..... or like Judge Massei who said that what was "mixed" was not blood, but Amanda's biological traces with Meredith's blood?

..... or like Judge Massei who acknowledged that eight of the 9 experts who testified in 2009 said that a single attacker was perfectly reasonable, and tyhat he'd made the decision on multiple attackers on grounds other than what the experts said?

You need to be more specific, Machiavelli. What truths are we supposed to admit the convicting courts settled on? None of them said it was a sex-game-gone wrong......

 

[Bill Williams]

There is no "evidence" presented by the pro-Knoxes here, but there is a series of claims by self-declared people informed about facts. Those self declared witnesses shall only bring their testimony to police or magistrates, if they believe their testimony is evidence of something.

It's absolutely false that this would bring a risk of a defamation charge. Halkudes and Zupancic have already committed a defamation; you don't commit defamation by bringing testimonies, you commit defamation by making false claims in public press conferences and articles. What you tell to the police or to a magistrate is confidential and can't be charged with defamation.

If you bring false testimony or submit false evidence to authorities you may commit calunnia instead, but only if you bring the false evidence maliciously, that means that you actually know that the evidence you are presenting is false and that the person is innocent.
Which is not what Halkides and Zupancic would do, I hope.

They would have a better time with the ECHR.

It is laughable that the Perugian folk were allowed to adjudicate the very claims of misconduct against them. Do you know what a conflict of interest is, Machiavelli?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Stefanoni provided the evidence herself

There is no "evidence" presented by the pro-Knoxes here, but there is a series of claims by self-declared people informed about facts. Those self declared witnesses shall only bring their testimony to police or magistrates, if they believe their testimony is evidence of something.

It's absolutely false that this would bring a risk of a defamation charge. Halkudes and Zupancic have already committed a defamation; you don't commit defamation by bringing testimonies, you commit defamation by making false claims in public press conferences and articles. What you tell to the police or to a magistrate is confidential and can't be charged with defamation.

Machiavelli,

Stefanoni provided the evidence that proved contamination in the form of the quantitation document. She was hoisted on her own petard. Your post would fertilize many rose bushes.

 

[carbonjam72]

There is no "evidence" presented by the pro-Knoxes here, but there is a series of claims by self-declared people informed about facts. Those self declared witnesses shall only bring their testimony to police or magistrates, if they believe their testimony is evidence of something.

It's absolutely false that this would bring a risk of a defamation charge. Halkudes and Zupancic have already committed a defamation; you don't commit defamation by bringing testimonies, you commit defamation by making false claims in public press conferences and articles. What you tell to the police or to a magistrate is confidential and can't be charged with defamation.

If you bring false testimony or submit false evidence to authorities you may commit calunnia instead, but only if you bring the false evidence maliciously, that means that you actually know that the evidence you are presenting is false and that the person is innocent.Which is not what Halkides and Zupancic would do, I hope.

This is interesting Mach. So the only way Amanda could know that Lumumba was innocent, is if she were at the murder scene and knew that Patrick was not. If Amanda were innocent, she could not know Patrick wasn't guilty?

Therefore, Judge Hellman's conviction for calunnia is inconsistent with his acquittal for murder, according to this logic, no?

SO, if Amanda and Raf never left Raf's apartment that night, then it follows that Amanda cannot be convicted of Calunnia.

I wonder what the ECHR will make of this? I hope they say something soon, and start the process of exoneration for Amanda and Raf, why add further delay?

And when will MIgnini and the police be investigated for their criminal conduct in the interrogations of AR and RS? Surely someone has to pay for this mess?

 

[AmyStrange]

-

The article on the Kercher murder was cleaned up after the personal intervention of Jimbo, the founder of Wikipedia. He actually did some of the edits himself before turning the project over to another senior editor.

-

I remember that happening, and I also remember reading the comments at the time. Some people even accused Jimbo of wanting Amanda sexually. I can't remember exactly what he said in response, but it wasn't pleasant, but I did have to admire him for how professionally he handled everything overall.

It was a real hoedown at the time,

d

-

 

[Chris_Halkides]

delete