Meredith Kercher murdered-Amanda Knox appeals conviction #18

[Allusonz]

Thanks. Here it is (page 5): the longer the better. Therefore, any criticism regarding the use of luminol 6 weeks after the murder is misplaced.

"... dried and decomposed blood ellicited a stronger and longer lasting luminol reaction than fresh blood."

http://www.cbdiai.org/Articles/grispino_8-91.pdf

Although you may get a stronger reaction with the luminol I would disagree with the longer the better aspect for a number of reasons especially when a crime scene is not sealed off properly such as was the case here as was noted by the experts.

There were far too many people in that cottage which was not necessary. A crime scene is to be immediately secured and a minimum number of people are to have access in order to eliminate issues such as contamination.

It is no wonder the court room was in complete laughter watching what transpired during the collection, bagging, etc. of forensic evidence. No forensic team should be proud of the blatent errors pointed out by the experts which numbered 50+. How could any jury seriously consider any of the evidence collected without pause for contamination

 

[Monzoo]

Although you may get a stronger reaction with the luminol I would disagree with the longer the better aspect for a number of reasons especially when a crime scene is not sealed off properly such as was the case here as was noted by the experts.

There were far too many people in that cottage which was not necessary. A crime scene is to be immediately secured and a minimum number of people are to have access in order to eliminate issues such as contamination.

It is no wonder the court room was in complete laughter watching what transpired during the collection, bagging, etc. of forensic evidence. No forensic team should be proud of the blatent errors pointed out by the experts which numbered 50+. How could any jury seriously consider any of the evidence collected without pause for contamination

I agree! Not to mention the spots which were found with luminol were tested with a second presumptive test for blood and turned out negative. Which means there is no evidence that the spots found by luminol were blood in the first place.

 

[SMK]

Just interjecting a general comment:

I find it immensely worrisome that I do not know what Hellman and the jury will be reviewing in their deliberations at the end of the month; whether or not they will stick to DNA which was disputed by the independent experts, or go into things such as the supposed staging of the crime scene, TOD, etc.

I am not the kind to proclaim victory when it is still uncertain.

Two diametrically opposed pieces below:

Knox said she felt the mood in the appeal court was different from what she described as a hostile atmosphere in the original trial.
"It's nice to feel that they don't hate me anymore, that finally someone is listening to me," she said.
"During the first trial, I was scared to enter the dock, I felt everyone was hostile, I felt that when I spoke and cried, when I tried to explain that I wasn't in the house that night, everybody was shrugging and mocking me."

http://news.yahoo.com/amanda-knox-hopes-home-thanksgiving-paper-150131977.html

Our Italian lawyers are not rating chances of a full acquittal above one or two percent. They believe the groundwork for that has simply not been laid. The judges and jury dont have what is needed to upend the detailed outcomes of two trials and two other appeals. And the Italian system is nothing if not very cautious and lacking in surprise.

The Supreme Court has accepted that THREE attackers had to have been present on the night. Not the slightest evidence of any perps other than the three put on trial has been advanced. No scenario has been offered in court for Guede having committed the crime on Meredith alone - in fact Guede accused the other two of being there right to their faces in court.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php

I did get a refutation of the TJMK on JREF the other day, confirming that the Italian Supreme court ruling on Guede has nothing to do with this appeals trial. Still, all is very troubling to me, as we do not really know what Hellman and the jury will decide, or what material will bear the preponderance with them...

 

[Allusonz]

Sorry I don't understand... I never said it was a match for either Sollecito or Guede but you seem to be suggesting I did..

I don't think it is convenient the drop landing there, quite the opposite in fact as it makes it impossible to match either print. It is just as likely that a drop would land there as anywhere else.

You are quite right it is virtually impossible to state with 100% accuracy whose print this is. As well they did not note that RS could not step on his 2nd toe or that AK's 2nd toe is much longer as IIRC their footprints were not taken till May 2008. PLE did not take prints of many other possible POI in this case. Huge mistake again and sloppy work.

This is simply a partial print and I would have difficulty as a juror being able to even use this as evidence in a trial when I would be making my determination

 

[Chris_Halkides]

otto,

Letting a stain age a bit would be fine, all else held equal. However, that is not the point. By waiting for so long and tossing Meredith's room in the intervening time, the forensic police probably transferred biological material from one part of the flat to another. There is a good review article on luminol in the journal Talanta from 2007, volume 72, page 896, with the first author of Barni (pdf here). It mentions the aging issue.

Here is a helpful quote from this review article with respect to presumptive blood tests, "The most problematic chemicals for a correct interpretation of luminol test results are those which provoke intensification or a generation of a chemiluminescence emission even if blood is not present, leading to false-positive results. Due to the possible presence of these substances at the crime scene, the luminol test must not be considered sufficiently specific to permit an unequivocal identification of blood"

 

[Allusonz]

Just interjecting a general comment:

I find it immensely worrisome that I do not know what Hellman and the jury will be reviewing in their deliberations at the end of the month; whether or not they will stick to DNA which was disputed by the independent experts, or go into things such as the supposed staging of the crime scene, TOD, etc.

I am not the kind to proclaim victory when it is still uncertain.

Two diametrically opposed pieces below:

http://news.yahoo.com/amanda-knox-hopes-home-thanksgiving-paper-150131977.html

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php

I did get a refutation of the TJMK on JREF the other day, confirming that the Italian Supreme court ruling on Guede has nothing to do with this appeals trial. Still, all is very troubling to me, as we do not really know what Hellman and the jury will decide, or what material will bear the preponderance with them...

I would love to say that anyone that uses any sort of logic would be able to come to the conclusion that there is simply not enough evidence against these 2. As been shown before though logic did not play much of a role in the first trial thus I am always careful of how anything could be interpreted.

The best indicator I have seen is what the papers have said. In the trial of the first instance it was pretty much stated that they would be found guilty prior to the end of the trial. This time around I am seeing the exact opposite that they will not be found guilty.

With that said I hope you are not a nail biter :giggle:

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Stomach content analysis is known to be unreliable in determining time of death. The recent trial in the murder of Nancy Cooper in NC included testimony about stomach contents, bug activity and known timelines. The testimony contradicted each other and the known timelines. That represents a clear counter-example to any argument that stomach contents conclusively determines time of death. The accused was still found guilty.

Finding someone guilty does not make them factually guilty. The Jane Mixer murder (in which Gary Leiterman was convicted) is my favorite example of this, since it involves an absurd interpretation of DNA evidence from a cold case. I have only found out a little bit about the Cooper murder case so far, but the prosecution's claim of vomiting does not appear to have anything to substantiate it (possibly Nancy died later than the police contend but was still murdered by her husband). More generally, I don't claim that stomach contents are perfect, but the TOD should not fly in the face of known physiology, either. With respect to this murder case, some of the variables are nailed down. From witness testimony, we have a good idea of when she ate, how much, and a lower bound on how long she was alive.

BTW, a detective accidently erased the contents of Nancy's cell phone.

 

[Fulcanelli]

Hello, I'm new here.

I'm a little confused as to all the maneuvering over the bath mat print. I mean, a court full of experts went over all the data, all the photos and measurements and concluded it clearly belonged to Raffaele Sollecito. Why such effort to reinvent the wheel?

There were far too many people in that cottage which was not necessary. A crime scene is to be immediately secured and a minimum number of people are to have access in order to eliminate issues such as contamination.

I'm curious. What 'is' that minimum?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Fulcanelli,

Welcome to the forum. Let’s examine the collective track record of the police and prosecution’s experts with respect to footprints and shoeprints:
They were asked to compare unknown prints to reference prints from Raffaele, Rudi, Amanda, and no one else (reference prints from others were not taken).
They wrongly attributed bloody shoeprints in the hall to Raffaele, when Rudi’s shoes matched the tread pattern but Raffaele’s did not.
They attributed a shoeprint to Amanda in Meredith’s room, when it was probably Rudi’s.
They attributed a luminol-positive footprint to Amanda, despite the obvious noncorrespondence of the second toe, as RoseMontague pointed out.

On the basis of this record, I would be tempted to bet against any position that this group took on the bathmat print a priori. However, it is when one puts Rinaldi’s measurements on top of the actual print that I become convinced of investigator bias. How else to explain the big toe discrepancy between print and measurement? Millimeter precision indeed.

 

[SMK]

This may be slightly off-topic, but as there was an argument on PMF about the audacity of Knox not wearing a bra in court, I wanted to point out that although she showed through inadvertently, it is clear that the straps of her cammosile-bra are visible in the second pic: Just felt Ms. Knox needed some defending, so am making a record of it:

Pictures by ZIMBIO.com http://www2.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Amanda+Knox+Amanda+Knox+Appeal+Trial+Resumes+Z6ZA3uZfY4fl.jpg

 

[otto]

Although you may get a stronger reaction with the luminol I would disagree with the longer the better aspect for a number of reasons especially when a crime scene is not sealed off properly such as was the case here as was noted by the experts.

There were far too many people in that cottage which was not necessary. A crime scene is to be immediately secured and a minimum number of people are to have access in order to eliminate issues such as contamination.

It is no wonder the court room was in complete laughter watching what transpired during the collection, bagging, etc. of forensic evidence. No forensic team should be proud of the blatent errors pointed out by the experts which numbered 50+. How could any jury seriously consider any of the evidence collected without pause for contamination

Experts in the field have said that the longer interval between crime and luminol use, the better. If you personally disagree with experts, that's fine ... neither here nor there. But if you disagree that the experts are correct, then please provide a link contradicting the information that has been provided

 

[otto]

I agree! Not to mention the spots which were found with luminol were tested with a second presumptive test for blood and turned out negative. Which means there is no evidence that the spots found by luminol were blood in the first place.

If you also disagree with the experts regarding luminol use, I would ask that you also provide a link.

 

[SkewedView]

Hello, I'm new here.

I'm a little confused as to all the maneuvering over the bath mat print. I mean, a court full of experts went over all the data, all the photos and measurements and concluded it clearly belonged to Raffaele Sollecito. Why such effort to reinvent the wheel?



I'm curious. What 'is' that minimum?

Contrary to the impressions that Massai's self-assured rulings may give, a court full of experts had wildly divergent interpretations of the print. This sorry state of affairs was mostly due to the fact that bare footprint analysis is unreliable for much more than estimation of stature, unless you know the exact variables of speed, orientation, environmental factors etc (which aren't known in this case).

Footprint analysis is not very well looked upon by the larger forensics community, like the other 'soft' forensics (hair and fiber analysis, forensic psychology etc) are more art than science, relying on subjective interpretations that are worrisome to many forensic scientists (much like LNC DNA, which was moved into court use without any consensus on interpretation or how to deal with the increased problems of contamination etc in a meaningful manner).

Basically, I see no point in hurting my eyesight looking at the stupid thing, as it is as pointlessly debatable as what some impressionist painting 'means'.

ETA: the above applies to footprint, not shoeprint analysis. The latter has been used reliably in courts and confirmed by peer review, the former has rarely been useful, and even when it has it has not stood up well to peer review.

 

[Fulcanelli]

Welcome to the forum.

Thank you, nice to be here

Let’s examine the collective track record of the police and prosecution’s experts with respect to footprints and shoeprints:

Again?

They were asked to compare unknown prints to reference prints from Raffaele, Rudi, Amanda, and no one else (reference prints from others were not taken).

Well, that's not actually true...all shoes and trainers were removed from the cottage and Raffaele's apartment for examination.

They wrongly attributed bloody shoeprints in the hall to Raffaele, when Rudi’s shoes matched the tread pattern but Raffaele’s did not.

This isn't correct either. The shoeprint they assigned to Raffaele was actually in Meredith's bedroom. However, that was a preliminary match. In ging before Judge Matteini in the early days of the case it was made clear to her that this match was preliminary, that on prima face it was a match for Raffaele's shoes, but a more detailed axamination would need to be carried out. As you weil know, having followed this case, things in Italy move rather slowly. It was some time before the required experts had a window open in which to perform the study. That said, they only had partial prints to deal with. The fundamental reason why that print was dropped from being assigned to Raffaele was because Rudy Guede turned around and said it may have been his. The fact is, it was never proven not to be Raffaele's and it was never proven to be Guede's (they never had his shoes to compare), but Raffaele was given the benefit of the doubt due to the fact it wasn't clear and Guede had said they may be his.

They attributed a shoeprint to Amanda in Meredith’s room, when it was probably Rudi’s.

The defence 'argued' it to be...that's not quite the same thing. The fact is, Judge Massei disregarded it, sumply because it wasn't clear either way.

They attributed a luminol-positive footprint to Amanda, despite the obvious noncorrespondence of the second toe, as RoseMontague pointed out.

You're not trying to argue the luminol prints aren't Amanda's...surely? Even Amanda and her lawyers aren't trying to argue that. They accept they are her prints.

 

[otto]

otto,

Letting a stain age a bit would be fine, all else held equal. However, that is not the point. By waiting for so long and tossing Meredith's room in the intervening time, the forensic police probably transferred biological material from one part of the flat to another. There is a good review article on luminol in the journal Talanta from 2007, volume 72, page 896, with the first author of Barni (pdf here). It mentions the aging issue.

Here is a helpful quote from this review article with respect to presumptive blood tests, "The most problematic chemicals for a correct interpretation of luminol test results are those which provoke intensification or a generation of a chemiluminescence emission even if blood is not present, leading to false-positive results. Due to the possible presence of these substances at the crime scene, the luminol test must not be considered sufficiently specific to permit an unequivocal identification of blood"

Am I to understand that you agree with the experts: that the longer the time interval between crime and the luminol use, the better the results, or are you also inclined to disagree with the experts? Are you suggesting that iron in blood will be reduced and the luminol sample degraded over time?

By discrediting the use of luminol, without additional tests, to reveal blood, how many people could get out a "get out of jail free" card?

 

[SkewedView]

This may be slightly off-topic, but as there was an argument on PMF about the audacity of Knox not wearing a bra in court, I wanted to point out that although she showed through inadvertently, it is clear that the straps of her cammosile-bra are visible in the second pic: Just felt Ms. Knox needed some defending, so am making a record of it:

Pictures by ZIMBIO.com http://www2.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Amanda+Knox+Amanda+Knox+Appeal+Trial+Resumes+Z6ZA3uZfY4fl.jpg

Jeez, are the misogynists still at it with the clothing obsession? Really, are we supposed to go around in hot weather pointing our fingers at women who dress to be cool, damning them for having their nipples poking through? Seriously, what kind of hypocritical perverts are those people?

 

[Fulcanelli]

Welcome to the forum.

Thank you, nice to be here

Let’s examine the collective track record of the police and prosecution’s experts with respect to footprints and shoeprints:

Again?

They were asked to compare unknown prints to reference prints from Raffaele, Rudi, Amanda, and no one else (reference prints from others were not taken).

Well, that's not actually true...all shoes and trainers were removed from the cottage and Raffaele's apartment for examination.

They wrongly attributed bloody shoeprints in the hall to Raffaele, when Rudi’s shoes matched the tread pattern but Raffaele’s did not.

This isn't correct either. The shoeprint they assigned to Raffaele was actually in Meredith's bedroom. However, that was a preliminary match. In going before Judge Matteini in the early days of the case it was made clear to her that this match was preliminary, that on prima face it was a match for Raffaele's shoes, but a more detailed examination would need to be carried out and this was scheduled. As you well know, having followed this case, things in Italy move rather slowly. It was some time before the required experts had a window open in which to perform the study. That said, they only had partial prints to deal with. The fundamental reason why that print was dropped from being assigned to Raffaele was because Rudy Guede turned around and said it may have been his. The fact is, it was never proven not to be Raffaele's and it was never proven to be Guede's (they never had his shoes to compare), but Raffaele was given the benefit of the doubt due to the fact it wasn't clear and Guede had said they may be his.

They attributed a shoeprint to Amanda in Meredith’s room, when it was probably Rudi’s.

The defence 'argued' it to be...that's not quite the same thing. The fact is, Judge Massei disregarded it, simply because it wasn't clear either way.

They attributed a luminol-positive footprint to Amanda, despite the obvious noncorrespondence of the second toe, as RoseMontague pointed out.

You're not trying to argue the luminol prints aren't Amanda's...surely? Even Amanda and her lawyers aren't trying to argue that. They accept they are her prints.

 

[otto]

Finding someone guilty does not make them factually guilty. The Jane Mixer murder (in which Gary Leiterman was convicted) is my favorite example of this, since it involves an absurd interpretation of DNA evidence from a cold case. I have only found out a little bit about the Cooper murder case so far, but the prosecution's claim of vomiting does not appear to have anything to substantiate it (possibly Nancy died later than the police contend but was still murdered by her husband). More generally, I don't claim that stomach contents are perfect, but the TOD should not fly in the face of known physiology, either. With respect to this murder case, some of the variables are nailed down. From witness testimony, we have a good idea of when she ate, how much, and a lower bound on how long she was alive.

BTW, a detective accidently erased the contents of Nancy's cell phone.

Have you factored in the temperature in the room through the night and again through the day, taken into consideration the lower metabolism after a night of heavy drinking ending less than 12 hours before the murder? All the little details make a difference.

 

[otto]

Hello, I'm new here.

I'm a little confused as to all the maneuvering over the bath mat print. I mean, a court full of experts went over all the data, all the photos and measurements and concluded it clearly belonged to Raffaele Sollecito. Why such effort to reinvent the wheel?



I'm curious. What 'is' that minimum?

Quite true. Court experts determined that the bloody print was compatble with Sollecito's footprint; qed. There are conspiracy theorists that think the courts got it all wrong and who use photoshopped images to argue the point. I thought it would be fun to use the same tool to demonstrate the court's conclusion.

 

[Monzoo]

If you also disagree with the experts regarding luminol use, I would ask that you also provide a link.

The outcome of these investigations had not been the subject of any particular or specific criticism. Dr. Sarah Gino observed that the quantity of DNA was compatible with what is known as low copy number, and it did not appear that the analysis had been repeated to validate the results. She underlined that the SAL [stato di avanzamento lavoro – work status report] reports which had been made available had shown that a generic diagnosis for blood had been performed and had given a negative result, and therefore it could not be said with certainty that blood was present in the material revealed by Luminol. There were peaks which were not considered, which could indicate the presence of other contributors.

-- Massei Report, PMF translation, pg. 282.