Evidence for "Dead body in the Damn Car"#2

thedeviledadvocate said:

Many, many people have already assigned a 0 to the value of C. This is why the motion for a COV came about.
If the defense did submit evidence through the discovery process, is there any evidence you can think of they might submit that could make you consider changing the value of C? Is there any evidence they could submit that could make you question the evidence in the trunk?

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TDA, you know I love reading your post, but this isn't a math assignment. Quit making me feel like I am in Chemistry class again. It's been 36 years since I took Chemistry!:crazy::blowkiss:

marspiter said:

One problem with all this. Juries for the most part tend to react like human beings and not digital devices in which you plug in 1's and 0's.

The human part will be this:
Cadaver dogs hit on trunk, the scientific evidence of the trunk is consistent with a corpse being in the trunk, multiple witnesses saying the car smelled like a dead body, Caylee was found dead.

You see a 2 year girl is dead. Jurors are going to want answers for that. That's a normal human response. The state has provided those answers to a certain degree. In the case of this thread..Caylee was dead in the trunk. The defense has provided what exactly?

Thus far all the defense has done is jockeyed for media attention, and bogged down proceedings with motions as a stall tactic. Where are the statements from the defense experts and the the evidence from the defense. Oh that's right they had one opportunity already and claimed they derived that Casey was not guilty based on the states evidence.

Next month will pretty much be put up or shut up for the defense. I'll speculate that the defense has nothing, and that's why they are reluctant to release anything. Kinda interesting that the defense experts have been quite lately especially with the DP still on the table. Kobi for example has completely disappeared.

So sure the defense can sit back and try all the misdirection they want. The jury is going to want answers for why a two year old girl in the care of her mother died. That and why her car smelled like and had things consistent with decomp in it, and thus far the defense has provided 0 (well unless one counts a squirrel or lunch meat as believable answers...to which my rebuttal is the Chupacabra or aliens as being equally believable). That to me is the only numerical value the jury is going to be interested in on this issue (0 answers from the defense).

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If you are correct, and the jury gets 0 answers from the defense, KC will be convicted, no doubt about it.
It will be interesting in February, and if the defense does not put up, they will have to shut up LOL.
Even so, I think the trial will be very interesting, and I don't think it will be an open and shut trial, but then thats my humble opinion.
All the debate in this thread over the technical wording, is interesting, but at trial the SA will convince the jury that the trunk had a decomposing hair, Adipocere, and the smell was from Caylee through questioning of the experts. If he is successful, KC will be convicted. As always my entire post is moo

notthatsmart said:

Just to add. There were food containers. The big black one. There was a stoufers bag. There were bags at the end of the table that you could not tell what were in them. (Dr Lee said bags of food). There should be up close pictures of each item, there should be bench notes. There is so much missing from discovery, it makes me sick.

I think this whole thing is based on Dr Vass only being given a couple chapters out of a whole book to make a determination. He deserved the right to know about everything in that trunk. As a matter of fact, he email Yuri asking for the inventory. Dr Vass or the fbi need to come clean with the adipocere. We all need to know if it is or isn't.

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Come clean? Because you believe he isn't being honest?

Tulessa said:

TDA, you know I love reading your post, but this isn't a math assignment. Quit making me feel like I am in Chemistry class again. It's been 36 years since I took Chemistry!:crazy::blowkiss:

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LOL, ok,
The 99.999 percent sure the trunk evidence is all valid,
RK being 100% sure it was a skull,
1 dipetera leg
1 hair with apparent decomp
These numbers mean nothing, the only math that really matters is

12 jurors all (100%) say guilty

Any number of jury members saying anything but guilty will result in public shock.

notthatsmart said:

this is what i mean by establishing fact first. If dr vass says consistent with, then it is not a post mortem interval as established fact, it is just consistent with. Therefore it could be butter, cheese, vomit, diaper poop, broiler chicken juice, perfume(febreeze), amoung many many things. So first, he will have to determine that it is indeed a post mortem interval..

It also cannot be called death band or post mortem death band until it is established that it is a death band. That is why they don't use those words.

Facts of this nature in these reports have not been established at all. Not even close. It is what it is, and what it is, is a wild guess at this point.

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<sigh>

thedeviledadvocate said:

LOL, ok,
The 99.999 percent sure the trunk evidence is all valid,
RK being 100% sure it was a skull,
1 dipetera leg
1 hair with apparent decomp
These numbers mean nothing, the only math that really matters is

12 jurors all (100%) say guilty

Any number of jury members saying anything but guilty will result in public shock.

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Oooppps. Forgot one. 1 body of a small child, minus one Mom who gave a damn.

notthatsmart said:

This is what I mean by establishing fact first. If Dr Vass says consistent with, then it is not a post mortem interval as established fact, it is just consistent with. Therefore it could be butter, cheese, vomit, diaper poop, broiler chicken juice, perfume(febreeze), amoung many many things. So first, he will have to determine that it is indeed a post mortem interval..

It also cannot be called death band or post mortem death band until it is established that it is a death band. That is why they don't use those words.

Facts of this nature in these reports have not been established at all. Not even close. It is what it is, and what it is, is a wild guess at this point.

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So what you are saying is that at the time these tests were done we were still looking for a kidnapped Caylee and Dr. Vass was able to take this wild guess. Wow, he's really good!!!!

Dr. Lee never returned, in a year. That is the alpha and the omega. He is a very wealthy man. He has stated publicly he was on this case pro bono. He could afford to have visited Florida many, many times over this year. He has not.The only explanation for him not returning is the defense did like his opinion of what he gleamed from searching the car. There is no other, absolutely no other inference one may draw from his absence FOR A YEAR, imo.

thedeviledadvocate said:

Many, many people have already assigned a 0 to the value of C. This is why the motion for a COV came about.
If the defense did submit evidence through the discovery process, is there any evidence you can think of they might submit that could make you consider changing the value of C? Is there any evidence they could submit that could make you question the evidence in the trunk?

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I certainly have an open mind and would change the value of "C" if or when convincing evidence is given by the defense. I can't, realistically, imagine what that evidence might be. I would question the evidence in the trunk if a convincing rebuttal were made to it from a qualified expert. At this point, I don't think it will happen. There's just too much for it all to be wrong.

My main point is that the defense has turned over no evidence whatsoever and this is not an "intangible" that we won't see until trial. Or, it shouldn't be. JB has made that mistake before. There's a reason we've seen no discovery from the defense.

Does anyone know how reliable the post-mortem characteristics of decomposition on hair is? Is there any literature or reports on what else may cause this? How accepted is this type of evidence among experts? I can't find anything that challenges this. Has the defense even seen the Q12 hair or examined it microscopically? What will the rebuttal argument to this be like? So far, the only challenge here I've seen to it is whether the postmortem changes are there or not.

The World According said:

Dr. Lee never returned, in a year. That is the alpha and the omega. He is a very wealthy man. He has stated publicly he was on this case pro bono. He could afford to have visited Florida many, many times over this year. He has not.The only explanation for him not returning is the defense did like his opinion of what he gleamed from searching the car. There is no other, absolutely no other inference one may draw from his absence FOR A YEAR, imo.

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Stunning point!

We are into January 2010 and about to start the Check Fraud trial which is going to distract and keep the Defense busy on something fairly trivial.

There is a DP Murder trial in play which is *supposed* to go to trial this Summer, IIRC July.

HL has not returned to examine the car and its contents for over a year and according to the recent SA motion, no evidence has been examined.

We are still awaiting ANY discovery from the Defense yet they are *supposed* to be on the hook to backup TM's claims that the current Prosecution evidence proves Caylee was not there at the time KC was not in jail, and thus strong evidence of innocence?

The options for the Check Fraud trial are to cause a last minute delay [= not popular given the gravity of the Murder trial], submit a guilty plea at the 12th hour [why not just get it done and move on?] or, proceed with the trial [takes a lot of cycles away from the Murder trial].

There is NOTHING to suggest that the Defense are examining any evidence in the Murder trial and they are heading into a very busy period. I don't see how they are going to have any time or cycles to focus on the evidence in the trunk when there is so much to deal with, an insurmountable amount of damning evidence against KC.

AL in her recent interview was very uncomfortable (according to Dr. LG) and talked about the DP forcing the issue of a plea deal.

Unless the Defense are going to push this trial into 2011 and beyond then I simply cannot see them having addressed all of these pieces, as we have debated in WS so will not have a credible sufficiently detailed Defense with experts ready to counter the forensics and witness statements this year.

I honestly believe that the Defense House of Cards are going to fall and AL already sees this. The February Defense Discovery release will show us all if they have anything at all and will either bolster their Defense case or cause the beginning of the collapse.

The Defense bluff will be called. Show me.

I just found this link for new fingerprint identification process that is currently identifying prints on plastic garbage bags and other plastic surfaces. IIRC there were no fingerprints identified/released from the car -(at least yet) but I wonder if the prints could be lifted from interior surfaces of the car, trunk, plastic bags, etc. Prints are made from 98% perspiration and 2% body oils, the gold/zinc/vacuum process sticks to the oils from the skin.
http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/fsi/article/PIIS0379073800003108/abstract

notthatsmart said:

I believe that determining that it was human adipocere or animal adipocere or that it was adipocere at all, would be easy in a lab environment. So, please give us that information or a trail to that information. Nothing about him being dishonest at all. It is just something that was left out.

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Something was left out???? Then why do I get it? Your child is dead, you are in lala land, and there is adipocere in your car and no squirrel? I get it, what's so hard?

notthatsmart said:

This is what I mean by establishing fact first. If Dr Vass says consistent with, then it is not a post mortem interval as established fact, it is just consistent with. Therefore it could be butter, cheese, vomit, diaper poop, broiler chicken juice, perfume(febreeze), amoung many many things. So first, he will have to determine that it is indeed a post mortem interval..

It also cannot be called death band or post mortem death band until it is established that it is a death band. That is why they don't use those words.

Facts of this nature in these reports have not been established at all. Not even close. It is what it is, and what it is, is a wild guess at this point.

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OK. Let's move on. This is just a circular argument. There is no way to come to a conclusion on this topic. If the experts are to be challenged, they need to be challenged by experts.
No offense to you or anyone else NTS, but I don't think any of us on this board have enough intimate knowledge with these lab results to challenge the expert analysis to this degree.
It is now noted how everyone is interpreting the results and that is about as far as we can take it for now. There is zero value in going around and around on this topic so I am asking you to move on to other evidence because this is a dead end.
Just to clarify, it is not a dead end because the experts are always right, it is a dead end because we do not have the expertise to challenge the results and their meaning at this point.

We have one verified resident chemist that can weigh in if she feels as though this is her area of expertise but that is about it. there is no one else qualified on this board to take this discussion any farther and even at that it would just be their interpretation as well.

Come trial, when they put other experts on the stand it may be a whole new ballgame, but for now this is just an exercise in frustration.

thanks.

notthatsmart said:

Just to add. There were food containers. The big black one. There was a stoufers bag. There were bags at the end of the table that you could not tell what were in them. (Dr Lee said bags of food). There should be up close pictures of each item, there should be bench notes. There is so much missing from discovery, it makes me sick.

I think this whole thing is based on Dr Vass only being given a couple chapters out of a whole book to make a determination. He deserved the right to know about everything in that trunk. As a matter of fact, he email Yuri asking for the inventory. Dr Vass or the fbi need to come clean with the adipocere. We all need to know if it is or isn't.

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Well, I'm not so sure it is missing NTS. Maybe we just haven't seen it yet?

Thanks! I totally agree that the next logical step for this thread is dependant upon:

1. Additional Discovery from the Prosecution,

2. Discovery from the Defense (published expert witness list),

3. We wait until trial and dissect expert presentation/interpretation.

We have pretty much beaten this to death and absent new info we are rehashing and reaching the same opinions/conclusions.

thedeviledadvocate said:

LOL, ok,
The 99.999 percent sure the trunk evidence is all valid,
RK being 100% sure it was a skull,
1 dipetera leg
1 hair with apparent decomp
These numbers mean nothing, the only math that really matters is

12 jurors all (100%) say guilty

Any number of jury members saying anything but guilty will result in public shock.

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Shock because it would be, IMO, a huge miscarriage of justice.

JBean said:

OK. Let's move on. This is just a circular argument. There is no way to come to a conclusion on this topic. If the experts are to be challenged, they need to be challenged by experts.
No offense to you or anyone else NTS, but I don't think any of us on this board have enough intimate knowledge with these lab results to challenge the expert analysis to this degree.
It is now noted how everyone is interpreting the results and that is about as far as we can take it for now. There is zero value in going around and around on this topic so I am asking you to move on to other evidence because this is a dead end.
Just to clarify, it is not a dead end because the experts are always right, it is a dead end because we do not have the expertise to challenge the results and their meaning at this point.

We have one verified resident chemist that can weigh in if she feels as though this is her area of expertise but that is about it. there is no one else qualified on this board to take this discussion any farther and even at that it would just be their interpretation as well.

Come trial, when they put other experts on the stand it may be a whole new ballgame, but for now this is just an exercise in frustration.

thanks.

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Can I hear an "amen"!

Amen! God Bless Sweet Baby Caylee.

InspectorGadget said:

Hello Joypath

If this goes to trial it certainly sounds like it will be dramatic. I think you said you were a microbiologist so I consider you less of a layperson than some of us. Thankyou for answering my questions.

I wasn't going to revisit this and I promise I am not going to split any more hairs with you from now on LOL!

But just one last question. Since the FBI lab did not do nuclear DNA testing on the root end, would this indicate that they don't have the root? How can they tell which end is the proximal end, and how close the piece of hair that they do have, was to the root?

TIA

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Greetings and salutations, IG!
Again: phenemonal questions! The proximal (root) end was placed under glass to preserve it for future evaluation (remember at that point, Caylee was ummmm missing), the term "proximal" is a scientific descriptor: point of attachment or origin vs "distal": situated farthest from point of attachment or origin; the ability to decide which term to use is based on the appearance of the item, in this case the hair shaft, under the microscope.
Had the hair retained its root, my belief is that a full DNA profile would have been completed ASAP since the decomp band was present. The length of the hair and the length of the submittted "known" sample would have HELPED in estimating the closeness of the end of the hair to the follicle/scalp. The specific importance of this measurement:minimal.
IMO: this is the area where defense expert (if he's still part of the "team") "Dr. Kobi" will bring in his background.


PS: as for me, my days as a clinical microbiologist/Med Tech were in my youth, but it was one of my passions! My staff now chuckles when I revert to the "oldfashioned nomenclature" during an autopsy but heck, "a rose by any other name........"

I'm adding a huge AMEN to the round robin discussion points covered and adding a tiny detail: the SA has to bring the jury into the entire scene where the death of this adorable child was orchestrated and completed by the defendant. That means tying all the ends and pieces together: the car, the house, the dump site. IMO: THERE HAS TO BE MORE scientific material out there, what we've seen so far again IMO, should have forced any realistic human being and defense team to run to the nearest PLEA BARGAIN STORE!

IMO: The defense team per se is counting on the razzle and dazzle 'em approach, overwhelm the jury with technical terms and make 'em fall asleep at the wheel like OJ; sorry not this time!