Who killed Meredith Kercher? part 23

[TruthCalls]

Whilst academic research provides us with a road map, in the real world police have to use any number of resources and techniques to solve a crime.

There is no requirement for any forensic test to be of absolute 100% academic standard. Perpetrators will lie and set out to conceal any incriminating sign of their presence at the scene.

A crime scene is rarely sterile, there may even be bluebottles and flies and all kinds of dirt.

The art is in piecing all of the evidence together to construct a reasonable facsimile of the crime scenario. Thus a speck on someone's glove is not going to be a deal breaker for an efficient and effective forensics team.

Yeah, yeah.. we get it - damn the science, if you don't like the results then make up your own. IOW, those traces were going to be made from Meredith's blood and they didn't care if test results said "not blood", "not Meredith". Kind of makes you wonder why they do the tests at all.

 

[fuelair]

You may be unaware that Knox and Sollecito were finally and definitively acquitted of the rape and murder of Kercher by the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation on March 27, 2015.

There is no longer any case against them, and no criminal or civil case may be brought against them in the future for the facts of the case, according to Italian law.

Some posters on this forum may disagree with the final verdict of acquittal, but the Supreme Court of Cassation motivation report found no credible evidence to support guilt, which must be determined by proof beyond a reasonable doubt according to Italian law.

Rudy Guede remains the only person definitively convicted of the murder/rape of Kercher. His request for a revision trial was rejected by the Court of Appeal of Florence.

Note that post 3391 and 3392 cover my points, I was aware of the info in both of those awhile back. My comments are and have been related to both of those situations. If the lab work and initial handling of the evidence had been done properly and thoroughly, as noted with examples in 3391 (and other posts) then the actions of the ISC would not have been needed as noted in 3392. This is why my post on same.

 

[LondonJohn]

So amusing to watch the irony of your failure to pick up my irony.

Ermmm.....riiiight

It certainly speaks to an issue which has reared its ugly head many times in this case: when does "reliable" really mean "reliable"? Quite apart from the atrocious manipulation of "reliable evidence" by one side in particular in the online debate, there are also numerous notorious examples within the investigation/trial process itself. To wit:

The "reliability" of Curatolo as a witness;
The "reliability" of Quintavalle as a witness;
The "reliability" of Capezzali as a witness;
The "reliability" of Stefanoni's DNA results;
The "reliability" of the police's assertion that the break-in was staged;
The "reliability" of the evidence of the postal police regarding their time of arrival and their actions within the cottage;
The "reliability" of Knox's criminal intent in naming Lumumba as Kercher's killer;

And there are so many more than even that......

The credulous and in-thrall-to-the-prosecutors Massei court accepted - virtually wholesale, and against any and every argument from the defence - that all of the above were truly "reliable". Fortunately, the Supreme Court has (albeit belatedly, after a cruel and farcical charade of a criminal justice trial process) in effect pointed out that all of these "reliable" elements (with the obvious exception of the last in the list, which is now the preserve of the ECHR) is in fact so far from reliable as to be laughable - if it wasn't so very, very serious.

Funny old world.

 

[Ergon]

Nothing Ergon says qualifies as "breaking news" let alone accurate.

One way to assert a person's a liar without having to verify I suppose but all you had to do was contact the press office, as I did.

But for your information, Ms. Knox's application to the European Court is at the "Initial Analysis" stage.

 

[acbytesla]

One way to assert a person's a liar without having to verify I suppose but all you had to do was contact the press office, as I did.

But for your information, Ms. Knox's application to the European Court is at the "Initial Analysis" stage.

I'd start with anyone that claims he is God.

 

[Ergon]

I'd start with anyone that claims he is God.

Try to stay on topic, which is the Meredith Kercher case. You responded to my communique from the Court Press Office that the case hadn't been ruled admissible with a claim it 'wasn't accurate'. Would you care to substantiate that, or do you want to open a new thread where you can make all the ad hominems you wish?

 

[Planigale]

Let's go to the court testimony.

A consultant, Sarah Gino is cross-examined:

[re TMB]




and:

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/Sarah_Gino's_Additional_Testimony


Note: 50% chance of a false positive or a positive negative.

You said I was making these figures up. So not only Stefanoni testified that TMB has this reputation, but consultant S Gino is saying it, too.


Please retract your claim.

I think Sarah Gino is speaking colloquially here. She is saying that when there is a positive Luminol test but a negative TMB test it is 50/50 that it is / is not blood. I do not think that if you pushed here she could provide a reference to this from research literature. She is saying it is uncertain. If you want to literally interpret the numbers she is saying in this circumstance Luminol has a 50% false positive rate, and TMB a 50% false negative rate. You might as well toss a coin to decide is it really blood or not.

The question is with this degree of uncertainty (not even more likely than not to be blood), how much weight should be put on this as evidence of guilt. (Remembering that the prints are too blurred to provide any sense of identity, they are too faint to have any certainty of time of deposition - they were found during the second sweep of the crime scene six weeks later, with the possibility they may have been deposited post crime; even if the prints were in blood and deposited by Knox this could have been after she had a shower the next day and stood on the blood stained bath mat. Certainly the concentration of blood is too low to have been the consequence of someone standing in blood then walking and leaving bloody prints - unlike the shoe prints which were visible to the naked eye; the blood if it was blood must have been highly diluted.)

So with uncertainty about the nature of the material, the time of deposition, the process of deposition, the depositor, can one objectively say that this is evidence to convict on? The court of cassation were clear in their opinion.

 

[Planigale]

I don't think you can, but isn't the quantity of white blood cells small?

While i agree with you that without DNA, we can't make an attribution, that isn't the hypothesis I'm suggesting. I'm just saying that the failure to find DNA in a presumptive positive luminol area does not mean it isn't blood. But, I am by no means an expert.

There is a paper from the forensic science unit at Scotland Yard looking at the best presumptive test for blood (they favour TMB for health and safety reasons, Luminol is a potential carcinogen), the point they made was that the sensitivity of the TMB test was greater than the DNA test. There is so much haemoglobin and so little DNA in a sample of blood that if you tested a blood stain you might find it to be TMB positive but DNA was negative and a negative DNA test should not exclude it being blood in the presence of a positive TMB test. DNA testing is more sensitive now and this may longer be true. There are non DNA tests to help with identity, such as blood grouping, however you would need a sufficiently large sample of blood that it would likely to be positive for DNA anyway.

 

[Planigale]

The ratio of white to red blood cells is between 1:1000 to 1:2000.

Stefanoni and Mignini believe Amanda was bleeding the same time as Mez as her mixed DNA in the bathroom sink exceeded Mez' whom we know was bleeding prolifically.

The claim, oh, it was just her brushing her teeth is just so much flannel.

Steffanoni (and I have previously posted you the quote) specifically said in evidence the source of the DNA could not be known. Steffanoni NEVER said that this was evidence that Kercher and Knox were bleeding at the same time. Why do you continue with these lies when you have previously been shown the testimony by Steffanoni.

Please reference where Steffanoni gave the relative amounts of DNA from the bathroom basin.

Mignini from memory believed that Knox's DNA was due to her imitation of Lady Macbeth,
"Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red."
The scrubbing to clean her hands of blood was the source of DNA. As opposed to the brushing of her teeth an excellent way of obtain large amounts of DNA, and then spitting epithelial (and possibly blood) laden saliva into the basin.

Of course we do not even know the time relationship between the two sources of DNA, nor even that Kercher's DNA was not from her washing her teeth. Though I accept it is reasonable to assume that the blood was that of the victim in the absence of a better explanation.

 

[Diocletus]

But for your information, Ms. Knox's application to the European Court is at the "Initial Analysis" stage

You just made this up, didn't you?

Having been assigned a review category and communicated, the case is now at the examination on the merits stage. Soon enough, it will be at the enforcement stage.

 

[acbytesla]

Try to stay on topic, which is the Meredith Kercher case. You responded to my communique from the Court Press Office that the case hadn't been ruled admissible with a claim it 'wasn't accurate'. Would you care to substantiate that, or do you want to open a new thread where you can make all the ad hominems you wish?

I was totally on topic. I was commenting on the credibility of sources for the case. I would never consider the guy who tells everyone he's God as a credible source. This is not where I get my information. It's not that this person might not be right. After all a broken watch is right twice a day. However it's also wrong more than 99 percent of the time. Not exactly a quality track record.

 

[acbytesla]

There is a paper from the forensic science unit at Scotland Yard looking at the best presumptive test for blood (they favour TMB for health and safety reasons, Luminol is a potential carcinogen), the point they made was that the sensitivity of the TMB test was greater than the DNA test. There is so much haemoglobin and so little DNA in a sample of blood that if you tested a blood stain you might find it to be TMB positive but DNA was negative and a negative DNA test should not exclude it being blood in the presence of a positive TMB test. DNA testing is more sensitive now and this may longer be true. There are non DNA tests to help with identity, such as blood grouping, however you would need a sufficiently large sample of blood that it would likely to be positive for DNA anyway.

Thanks. I think you are confirming my thoughts. The presence of DNA in area that reacts to Luminol does little to confirm that the substance is blood. That there are better methods to to confirm the presence of blood.

 

[Numbers]

You just made this up, didn't you?

Having been assigned a review category and communicated, the case is now at the examination on the merits stage. Soon enough, it will be at the enforcement stage.

To be accurate, the case, as far as known to the public, is at the stage where observations are gathered by the ECHR. These would include observations on admissibility from the respondent State. But such observation on admissibility (such as whether the State agrees that the applicant has exhausted domestic remedies on each complaint) are to be completed based upon the first Communication (29 April 2015). There have been two additional rounds of Communications to the State, according to the Case Details, suggesting that the ECHR is seeking more information on the merits.

In terms of admissibility, it should be understood that the application, or some large part of the claims, have passed the initial review by the ECHR, since the ECHR only Communicates the case to the State after that initial review is completed. There may be comments from the State on admissibility that the ECHR, after seeking a response from the applicant, will consider.

But at any rate, since the ECHR has not to date dismissed the application with adecision stating that it was inadmissible, the next stage known to the public will be the judgment, which will detail ECHR's conclusions on admissibility and merits. The judgment may become available in 2017, but depending on ECHR work load and whether the ECHR decides to obtain more information from the State with further Communications, it may be available in 2018.

Here are two ECHR publications with information on the Knox v. Italy case: 1) State of Proceedings and 2) Case Details.

The Court’s State of Proceedings (SOP) search engine enables parties to find out the current procedural state of an application solely for cases that are:

Allocated to a judicial formation
Not anonymous
Pending before the Court or have been disposed of within the last two years
If the application you are looking for does not meet the above criteria the following message will appear: “No information can be given for this application.” Please note that the information relating to the SOP is available two months after a change in the state of proceedings for a case.

Application number
76577/13
Application title
Knox v. Italy
Date of Introduction
24/11/2013
Name of representative
Carlo Dalla Vedova
Current state of proceedings
Application Communicated to Government with request for observations - Rule 54 § 2 (b)
Last major event
29/04/2016* Communicated to the Government for observations
List of major events

Description
Event date
Communicated to the Government for observations
29/04/2016
Application requiring a decision
23/12/2013
______
Case Details

Document Type
Communicated Case
Language(s)
French
Title
KNOX c. ITALIE
App. No(s).
76577/13
Importance Level
3
Represented by
DALLA VEDOVA C.
Respondent State(s)
Italy
Conclusion(s)
Affaire communiquée
Affaire communiquée
Affaire communiquée
Article(s)
3
6
6-1
6-3-a
8
8-1
Keywords
(Art. 3) Prohibition of torture
(Art. 6) Right to a fair trial
(Art. 8) Right to respect for private and family life

 

[Bill Williams]

You just made this up, didn't you?

Having been assigned a review category and communicated, the case is now at the examination on the merits stage. Soon enough, it will be at the enforcement stage.

I remain skeptical of the certainty of a positive ECHR outcome. Apparently Vogt has tweeted - I think it's a tweet - that the only two items left from this almost decade-long nightmare is the Sollecito/Gumbel charges and the ECHR decision, as well as RS's compensation.

If I'm reading this right, that means even she concedes the definitive acquittals in 2015 - which she's writen more than once; she concedes that the Curt/Edda prosecution is gone, that the Boninsegna acquittal is all-but definitive and that the "hopes" that PGP put on to Rudy's revision request was fantasy.

What's left is everyone getting on with their lives.....

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Blood Count

Robert Kerber wrote an article about hemoglobin for the Journal of Chemical Education in 2007. He quoted two other sources for how much Hb is present:

“Every milliliter of blood has approximately 5 billion erythrocytes…, and each erythrocyte is packed with 280 million molecules of hemoglobin” (4). “The concentration of hemoglobin molecules in red blood cells is so high (340 mgmL, 2.3 mM) that they almost could be said to be on the verge of crystallization…. The α2β2 tetramers, spheroids of axial dimensions 65 by 55 by 50 Å, are only 10 Å apart on the average” (5).

Saladin's Anatomy and Physiology states that neutrophils are about 60-70% of all white blood cells and that lymphocytes are 25-33% of all white blood cells. If we sum the concentrations of the two (4150 + 2185 = 6300 cells per microliter*) and compare to red blood cells (about 5,000,000 per microliter, we obtain a ratio of about 1 to 800. *Saladin give 5,0000-10,000 as the normal range for the number of white blood cells per microliter.

 

[Ergon]

You just made this up, didn't you?

Having been assigned a review category and communicated, the case is now at the examination on the merits stage. Soon enough, it will be at the enforcement stage.

Er, no. According to the Court Questions and Answers document (I'm not able to post a link yet)

What are the main stages in the process?
The Court must first examine whether your application is admissible. This means that the case must comply with certain requirements set out in the Convention. If the conditions are not satisfied, your application will be rejected. If you have made several complaints, the Court may declare one or more of them admissible and dismiss the others.

And this flow chart

The life of an application

It is still at the "Initial analysis stage", since no "Admissibility decision" has been made yet.

 

[Agatha]

This thread is becoming less responsive and is generating duplicates, so I have opened a shiny new part 24 here.

Posted By: Agatha