Amanda Knox found guilty for the murder of Meredith Kercher in Italy #15

[quesarita]

Exactly. There were 16 Meredith fingerprints found in Meredith's room. There were 14 Laura fingerprints found in Laura's bedroom (a couple were on her bathroom door). There were only 2 Filomena fingerpriints, found in her room. There was only 1 Amanda fingerprint found - it was in the kitchen.

There were no fingerprints at all found in the small bathroom. There were no fingerprints found on the interior of the large bathroom, even though Rudy had used that bathroom to do his poo. There were no fingerprints found in the living area or the dining area, except for 1 of Raffaelle. There was only 1 fingerprint found in the kitchen, even though Amanda and Raffaelle had eaten lunch there, and Meredith was also in the house the day before. And Amanda in her e-mail states that Meredith came over and talked to them while they were eating lunch.

There were no fingerprints found on the kitchen table.


Amanda and/or RS wiped all fingerprints from small bathroom (including door), from Filomena's room (staging room), from Amanda's room, from the living area, from the kitchen/eating area, from the interior of large bathroom, and from the front door.

I did try to read the fingerprint expert's testimony, but the translations were particularly bad. I picked up a couple of points that were interesting: they collected 108 prints for analysis. Of those, 61 had at least 17 reference points that could be proved to be from the people on the list (housemates, boyfriends, etc) or definitely NOT those people (unknown, unidentified).

But there were 47 prints that do not show up on the fingerprint map because they were not complete enough or clear enough to get the 17 matching points. It sounded like some of those had 15 or 16 matching points with Amanda and/or Filomena, just not 17. And some of those were in the bedroom next to Meredith's room (ie: Amanda's room).

So the map is apparently not complete - they did not find 0 prints in those areas, they just didn't find complete enough prints to definitively identify the owners.

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/Giuseppe_Privitera's_Testimony

 

[Harmony 2]

Amanda’s false accusation is the catalyst for all that happened afterwards.
In the Norfolk Four case, due to the tactics used in the interrogations, they all falsely confessed and then went on to falsely accuse others of taking part in the crime.

The real murderer, Omar Ballard, is also serving—among other sentences—a double-life sentence for this crime. Ballard has admitted repeatedly, and confirms to this day (including in sworn testimony to a Virginia court), that he committed this crime alone. The physical evidence conclusively establishes Ballard’s guilt. Exacting DNA testing conducted by the Commonwealth has proven beyond doubt that Ballard—and only Ballard—was the source of semen and blood recovered from the crime scene. And there was no DNA or other physical evidence whatsoever linking the sailors or anyone other than Ballard to this crime.

http://www.norfolkfour.com/

I highly recommend viewing this documentary to see how the false accusations and confessions were extracted from the men who were innocent in the crime.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-confessions/

Patrick Lumumba backs up what Amanda stated about the treatment and tactics of the investigators during the interrogations:

"They hit me over the head and yelled 'dirty black'. Then they put handcuffs on me and shoved me out of the door, as Aleksandra pulled Davide away, screaming." He was greeted outside by a convoy of seven police cars, sirens blazing, and driven to Perugia's police station, where he was subjected to a ten-hour interrogation. "I was questioned by five men and women, some of whom punched and kicked me," he claims.

Stunned, I said, 'You think I killed Meredith?' "They said, 'Oh, so now you've remembered' and told me that if I confessed I'd only get half the 30-year sentence." It wasn't until 5.30pm that still handcuffed and unfed he was shown the evidence against him, a statement from Amanda saying that on the night of November 1 he had persuaded her to take him back to the house she shared with Meredith and two others.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ls-framed-Merediths-murder.html#ixzz2s8gX1SJO

Knox says she was repeatedly threatened and called a liar. She was told, falsely, that Sollecito, her boyfriend, disavowed her alibi and that physical evidence placed her at the scene. She was encouraged to shut her eyes and imagine how the gruesome crime had occurred, a trauma, she was told, that she had obviously repressed. Eventually she broke down crying, screaming, and hitting herself in the head. Despite a law that mandates the recording of interrogations, police and prosecutors maintain that these sessions were not recorded. Two “confessions” were produced in this last session, detailing what Knox called a dreamlike “vision.” Both were typed by police—one at 1:45 a.m., the second at 5:45 a.m. She retracted the statements in a handwritten letter as soon as she was left alone (“In regards to this ‘confession’ that I made last night, I want to make it clear that I’m very doubtful of the verity of my statements because they were made under the pressures of stress, shock, and extreme exhaustion.&#8221.

Against this physical backdrop, the Reid operational nine-step process begins when an interrogator confronts the suspect with unwavering assertions of guilt (1); develops "themes" that psychologically justify or excuse the crime (2); interrupts all efforts at denial and defense (3); overcomes the suspect's factual, moral and emotional objections (4); ensures that the passive suspect does not withdraw (5); shows sympathy and understanding and urges the suspect to cooperate (6); offers a face-saving alternative construal of the alleged guilty act (7); gets the suspect to recount the details of his or her crime (8); and converts the latter statement into a full written or oral confession (9). Conceptually, this system is designed to get suspects to incriminate themselves by increasing the anxiety associated with denial, plunging the suspect into a state of despair and then minimizing the perceived consequences of confession.

http://madon.public.iastate.edu/595E/WEEKLY READINGS/Week4/2.Kassin 2012.pdf

When accusing Patrick she placed herself there in the kitchen so essentially this was a confession albeit a false one. IMO very similar to the internalized false confession of Peter Reilly.

Internalized false confessions. During interrogation, some suspects--particularly those who are young, tired, confused, suggestible and exposed to false information--come to believe that they committed the crime in question, even though they did not. In a classic case, 18-year-old Peter Reilly of Falls Village, Conn., returned home one night to find that his mother had been murdered. Reilly immediately called the police but was suspected of matricide. After gaining Reilly's trust, the police told him that he failed a lie detector test (which was not true), and which indicated that he was guilty even though he had no conscious memory of the event. After hours of interrogation, the audiotape reveals that Reilly underwent a chilling transformation from denial to confusion, self-doubt, conversion ("Well, it really looks like I did it") and finally a full confession ("I remember slashing once at my mother's throat with a straight razor I used for model airplanes.... I also remember jumping on my mother's legs"). Two years later independent evidence revealed that Reilly could not have possibly committed the murder.

http://iilab.utep.edu/reprints/Sci.Am.Mind_6.01.05.pdf

Once a suspect confesses, police often close the investigation, deem the case solved, and overlook exculpatory information— even if the confession is internally inconsistent, contradicted by external evidence, or the product of coercive interrogation (Drizin & Leo, 2004; Leo & Ofshe, 1998).

http://madon.public.iastate.edu/595E/WEEKLY READINGS/Week4/2.Kassin 2012.pdf

IMO The following is applicable to false accusations as the same techniques are used to elicit cohersed false accusations and false confessions.

False confession is not a phenomenon that is known to the average layperson as a matter of common sense. Over the years, mock jury studies have shown that confessions have more impact on verdicts than do other potent forms of evidence (Kassin & Neumann, 1997) and that people do not adequately discount confessions— even when they are retracted and judged to be the result of coercion (Kassin & Sukel, 1997; Kassin & Wrightsman, 1980; Redlich, Ghetti, & Quas, 2008), even when jurors are told that the confessor suffered from psychological illness or interrogation-induced stress (Henkel, 2008), and even when the confessions are provided not by the defendant himself or herself but by an informant who is incentivized to falsely implicate the defendant (Neuschatz, Lawson, Swanner, Meissner, & Neuschatz, 2008). Most people reasonably believe that they would never confess to a crime they did not commit, so they evaluate others accordingly, do not understand the influence of police interrogation practices, and have only a rudimentary understanding of the dispositional and situational factors that would lead someone innocent to confess (Blando´n-Gitlin, Sperry, & Leo, 2011; Henkel, Coffman, & Dailey, 2008; Leo & Liu, 2009).

http://madon.public.iastate.edu/595E/WEEKLY READINGS/Week4/2.Kassin 2012.pdf

 

[cf1140]

Who is JVS that several posters were referring to on page 4 of this thread?

 

[TorisMom003]

Who is JVS that several posters were referring to on page 4 of this thread?

I think that is Jordan Van der Sloot but not sure.

 

[Jessica2012]

I believe they cleaned up. Even more since I read that Rudy knew about the blood in the hallway even before the police had done the luminol test and realized blood had been present there. My question is, how did AK and RS selectively clean up their footprints without touching Rudy's? That is one thing I am not able to fully understand. How did they clean theirs but leave Rudy's behind in the hallway?

 

[TorisMom003]

I fully believe they cleaned up. Even more since I read that Rudy knew about the blood in the hallway even before the police had done the luminol test and realized blood had been present there. My question is, how did AK and RS selectively clean up their footprints without touching Rudy's? That is one thing I am not able to fully understand. How did they clean theirs but leave Rudy's behind in the hallway?

I think that the comment by Rudy is being taken as meaning more than what Rudy really meant. Of course there was blood in the hallway, and he knew about it, since Rudy was the one that stepped in Meredith's blood and then tracked it on the floor in the hallway. The problem with the selectively cleaning up footprints that were in blood and then found with luminol is that there are no signs of cleaning that was seen in the luminol. There are no streaks seen from a rag, cloth, mop, etc seen when the luminol was applied.

MOO

 

[quesarita]

I believe they cleaned up. Even more since I read that Rudy knew about the blood in the hallway even before the police had done the luminol test and realized blood had been present there. My question is, how did AK and RS selectively clean up their footprints without touching Rudy's? That is one thing I am not able to fully understand. How did they clean theirs but leave Rudy's behind in the hallway?

Yes, how could they do that, especially where the luminol footprint overlays Rudy's footprint? (or Rudy's overlays the luminol print)

 

[aa9511]

I did try to read the fingerprint expert's testimony, but the translations were particularly bad. I picked up a couple of points that were interesting: they collected 108 prints for analysis. Of those, 61 had at least 17 reference points that could be proved to be from the people on the list (housemates, boyfriends, etc) or definitely NOT those people (unknown, unidentified).

But there were 47 prints that do not show up on the fingerprint map because they were not complete enough or clear enough to get the 17 matching points. It sounded like some of those had 15 or 16 matching points with Amanda and/or Filomena, just not 17. And some of those were in the bedroom next to Meredith's room (ie: Amanda's room).

So the map is apparently not complete - they did not find 0 prints in those areas, they just didn't find complete enough prints to definitively identify the owners.

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/Giuseppe_Privitera's_Testimony

I'm sorry, that is not an excuse. In any scenario, they should have found relatively equal numbers of the 4 roommates. Or, at least, not such glaring discrepancies.

If Amanda and/or Filomena had some of these incomplete fingerprints, then so would Meredith and Laura. So that means that the number of fingerprints found are just:

Meredith - 16 + some possibly incomplete number
Laura - 14 + some possibly incomplete number
Filomena - 2 + some possibly incomplete number
Amanda - 1 + some possibly incomplete number

As you see, the base number should not have such discrepancies, even in the incomplete fingerprint theory.

 

[dog.gone.cute]

snipped from : http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/knox-judge-faces-allegations-of-impropriety?gt1=51501


Defense lawyers for Sollecito, Knox's co-defendant, said Monday they will request disciplinary action against Florence Judge Alessandro Nencini as a result of comments the presiding appellate court judge made on Sollecito's defense strategy to Italian media following Thursday's guilty verdict — and that the comments could form part of their planned appeal of the verdict.



:banghead::banghead::banghead:

 

[quesarita]

I'm sorry, that is not an excuse. In any scenario, they should have found relatively equal numbers of the 4 roommates. Or, at least, not such glaring discrepancies.

If Amanda and/or Filomena had some of these incomplete fingerprints, then so would Meredith and Laura. So that means that the number of fingerprints found are just:

Meredith - 16 + some possibly incomplete number
Laura - 14 + some possibly incomplete number
Filomena - 2 + some possibly incomplete number
Amanda - 1 + some possibly incomplete number

As you see, the base number should not have such discrepancies, even in the incomplete fingerprint theory.

I wasn't making an "excuse." I was saying that its not true there were zero prints in the areas of the map that don't show prints. 47 prints not definitive as a yes or no for the people on the list were collected, no way to know from where they were collected in the flat.

 

[dog.gone.cute]

snipped from : http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/knox-judge-faces-allegations-of-impropriety?gt1=51501


"This is not a vendetta because a judge handed down a sentence other than what we expected," defense lawyer Luca Maori said by telephone on Monday. Maori said Sollecito's defense will ask the the magistrate's governing body, the Judicial Ministry, and Italy's supreme Court of Cassation to take disciplinary action, calling the comments on defense strategy a "serious" breach.


:twocents: "This is not a vendetta ... "

:waitasec: Yeah, right ... then WHAT is it ?

 

[Madeleine74]

Why does it seem so stupid to put a knife back in a kitchen drawer, when people believe they didn't commit the murder because they put the knife back in the kitchen drawer? Are you not just proving their strategy successful?

Where is the evidence of blood drops leading out of the apartment from this knife? Are there any drops? How do we know this knife is "the" knife?

IIRC, the coroner said the knife found in RS's kitchen didn't match either the wounds or the knife imprint found in the room. If that is incorrect can someone please link me to where it says it did match the wounds and knife imprint?

 

[Madeleine74]

AK said herself that the drop of HER blood on the sink was not there the day before the murder.

Where (on her body) was AK wounded that she was dropping her blood in the bathroom at the time of the murder?

 

[Jessica2012]

Where (on her body) was AK wounded that she was dropping her blood in the bathroom at the time of the murder?

There was a wound under her chin that people speculated about. It was not there until after the murder. She says it was a hickey but others who saw it said it looked nothing like a hickey.

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index...ach_the_case_if_justice_is_to_be_done_and_se/

 

[Madeleine74]

There was a wound under her chin that people speculated about. It was not there until after the murder. She says it was a hickey but others who saw it said it looked nothing like a hickey.

So, logically, if AK received that wound at the time of attacking Meredith enough that it caused bleeding to occur, one would think the wound was caused by one of the following:

- Meredith defending herself (thus AK's skin cells should be under one or more of MK's fingernails)

- the knife.

Which item had corresponding blood evidence from AK?

 

[Jessica2012]

So, logically, if AK received that wound at the time of attacking Meredith enough that it caused bleeding to occur, one would think the wound was caused by one of the following:

- Meredith defending herself (thus AK's skin cells should be under one or more of MK's fingernails)

- the knife.

Which item had corresponding blood evidence from AK?

There is evidence that Meredith did not fight back, she was very athletic and knew Karate. There is evidence of her mouth being covered, her hands being held down, and being subdued. In the first trial it was proved that one person could not have acted alone.

 

[Madeleine74]

There is evidence that Meredith did not fight back, she was very athletic and knew Karate. There is evidence of her mouth being covered, her hands being held down, and Meredith being subdued. In the first trial it was proved that one person could not have acted alone.

Ok. So where was the item that had the corresponding evidence that matches the wound under AK's chin? Did she scratch herself? Did this blood that came from the wound under her chin bleed anywhere else but that drop found in the sink?

 

[Myvice]

Where (on her body) was AK wounded that she was dropping her blood in the bathroom at the time of the murder?

Well, the explanation she gave was it came from one of her ears. If you look at the photos from that day she does have one missing on her left ear. I guess this would make sense if one was pulled through during the struggle or something but I find it hard to believe an infected ear alone would bleed to the point of leaving droplets.

On the other had I've always thought it was from a bloody nose. JMO

 

[Madeleine74]

Well, the explanation she gave was it came from one of her ears. If you look at the photos from that day she does have one missing on her left ear. I guess this would make sense if one was pulled through during the struggle or something but I find it hard to believe an infected ear alone would bleed to the point of leaving droplets.

On the other had I've always thought it was from a bloody nose. JMO

Where did this blood drip? It had to have started in MK's room. Was it on anything? On a piece of MK's clothing? On a sheet or bedspread? One blood drop in a sink doesn't show anything about where the injury occurred or even if it occurred at the time of the murder. It has to link up to something in that murder room (BR) since that's where the attack occurred.

 

[Myvice]

Where is the evidence of blood drops leading out of the apartment from this knife? Are there any drops? How do we know this knife is "the" knife?

IIRC, the coroner said the knife found in RS's kitchen didn't match either the wounds or the knife imprint found in the room. If that is incorrect can someone please link me to where it says it did match the wounds and knife imprint?

IIRC, the coroner said the injury from this knife wasn't long enough for the knife to have been inserted all the way in. That doesn't mean that if MK was pushed in to it accidentally that the knife couldn't have been withdrawn before inserting it all the way to the hilt. JMO