Meredith Kercher murdered-Amanda Knox appeals conviction #18

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  • #801
:welcome:

Hands you a special designer straight jacket for this thread

Great perspective with respect to the Motivational Report

Thanks, it is a commonly misunderstood document. You'd think the fact there is an automatic appeal and so many verdicts in the trial of the first instance are overturned ought to suggest to most that what's contained in that Motivations Report cannot be immutable by that fact alone.

Alas, not.
 
  • #802
Oh right, what time do you think they arranged to meet him? Amanda didn't know she was going to be off work earlier in the day, and Raf thought he was running an errand for someone. Can you give me a time that would have been convenient for them all that fits in with the known facts of the case?

Secondly, what do you think the reason for their meeting with Rudy would have been?


How would I know what time they arranged? It could have been a loose arrangement. Alternatively it may not have been arranged and Rudy just happened to come along....since that was where he hanged out. As for Amanda, she may not have even remembered she had to work when (if) the arrangement was made...I mean, her memory isn't great, is it? Regarding Raffaele, he didn't even arrange to give someone a lift until the early evening. If they had bumped into Rudy in town, it would have been before that. As for the lift itself, it was cancelled pretty soon after he agreed to do it. Had it not have been, they still had plenty of time to do what they wanted to do before it was time for him to give the girl a lift. And hey, he could always cancel if he wanted/needed to.
 
  • #803
Edgardo Giobbi made that statement just after the arrests were made. He is really confident that he could ascertain guilt just by her behavior alone.
check him out here: Amanda Knox - Behavior = Guilt/Giobbi:"Case Closed" - YouTube



What "evidence" matched what she told them? What evidence did they have when they arrested her? Please be specific.



Actually, according to the conviction, NONE of it was true. Amanda in the kitchen? Patrick in the cottage? The meeting following the text? No, no, and no. Go back and read the early news stories and you will find that all the "incriminating" leaks from the police ended up completely bogus.

The reason she names Patrick and not Rudy was because no one had any clue it was Rudy at the time. But they were looking for a black man, and they did have a "see you later" text to a black man from a roommate. Looks like something could possibly be going on right? But they were wrong!



I'm glad you asked. In the very early days of the case, the police knew that the break-in was staged. Because of that, they believed that the perpetrators were people that Meredith both knew and who had a key. Due to the crime scene, they also believed there was more then one attacker. It was for this reason they focused mainly on the housemates and Meredith's English friends and the boyfriends. This can actually all be read in Italian news articles fating from the 2nd to the 5th Nov 2007. So, when the housemate Amanda told them she had gone to the cottage with at least one other and let him in with the key and at least two of them were then involved in what down in the cottage, it fitted perfectly with the police assessment what the police had independently worked out what went down at the cottage. Up until then though, all of those persons of interest had alibis and many of them didn't have keys. Then, Raffaele dropped Amanda's alibi and told them she had gone to Le Chic to see her friends. Shortly after that, they found Knox had sent a text message that looked like she was arranging to meet someone later that night. Knox knew Meredith. Knox had a key. Then, when Knox claimed she took Patrick to the cottage, she broke down in tears, freaked out and started hitting herself about the head and screaming. Meanwhile, Raffaele freaked out when he heard police were questioning Amanda and he had to be restrained. for the police, it was now clear. Then, Amanda later demanded to be heard again where she repeated her story to the prosecutor. She then again, reinforced her accusation against Patrick in her written memorial. The only thing that had to be resolved was the detail and the level of involvement in the attack of each.

The police weren't looking for a black man. They were looking for someone who knew Meredith who was a housemate, or had a key. A black man wasn't even on the radar.


And yes, it was true, Amanda and Raffaele had indeed gone to the cottage that evening and had attacked, sexually assaulted and murdered Meredith. The only difference was, in Amanda's version to the police, she substituted Patrick Lumumba for Rudy Guede.
 
  • #804
No one did a confirmatory blood test. Therefore if Massei concluded it was blood, his report is erroneous in this regard. We have been through this before.

It doesn't work that way. A court can use multiple pieces of evidence, the context and probability to come to a judgement about an element.
 
  • #805
Is it being suggested that someone other than PLE was in the cottage snapping pictures? That would then mean this crime scene was not secure which is a breach of protocol

Who is suggesting it?
 
  • #806
I would love to know how Curatolo was able to identify them in their costumes. Maybe there is additional information that was testified to regarding his identification of them in costume that I missed that convinced Massei?


Curatolo didn't say Amanda and Raffaele were wearing costumes.
 
  • #807
Dang and it was even on the rulers and feet of the forensics team that traversed back and forth from room to room and from the outside as their feet were glowing as well. How does one explain that?

Um...no.
 
  • #808
Would you not though have the nice lines as the water trickled down the walls? That is how it works in my shower. I can honestly state I have never seen water trickled upwards save in zero gravity


Not when they wiped things over shortly after and effectively spread it about.
 
  • #809
sherlockh,

The way one excludes the alternatives for blood is by doing the confirmatory tests. Your second sentence begins with the word "if." Are you in fact claiming that the forensic police or the prosecution did indeed exclude the other alternatives? If so, would you please elucidate precisely how this was done?

There wasn't enough material to test. And their priority wasn't testing for blood, they knew it was blood already...it was an abattoir, their priority was to extract DNA and they needed all the material for that. The DNA traces they extracted were LCN as it was.
 
  • #810
sherlockh,

Your answer is lacking in specifics, and your comparison is a weak one. Bot theory and experience (see Sara Gino's testimony) tell us that catalytic tests (luminol, TMB, Kastle-Meyer, etc.) provide false positives. When the confirmatory tests come back negative, the FBI labs state that the presence of blood could not be confirmed. That implies that presumptive testing is not sufficient to conclude that blood is present. I'll give you a example of something that cuts no ice whatsoever, namely Ms Comodi's saying words to the effect, "Blood or turnip juice? You decide." Any prosecutor could say that, and if it had any validity as an argument, there would be no need for confirmatory tests.

Did you read the link I provided? Here is a link to the abstract of a recent review article by someone with a national reputation in forensic science. The article goes through both confirmatory and presumptive tests.
"Analysis of body fluids for forensic purposes: From laboratory testing
to non-destructive rapid confirmatory identification at a crime scene," Kelly Virkler and Igor K. Lednev, Forensic Science International 188 (2009) 1–17.


This is Italy, not the FBI. Just because the FBI does something a certain way, it doesn't mean that's the gold standard on how everything must be done.
 
  • #811
The cottage has two apartments. The one on the upper floor is where Kercher, Know and the two Italian women lived. The lower floor is where the four guys lived that Rudy knew lived. The windows on the lower floor are all protected by burglar bars. Your circle on the left side is an entry to the lower apartment. There is no internal connection between the two apartments.

As you can see from your photo, the upstairs balcony is in full view of the street. At night, the streetlight visible in the photo illuminates that side of the building. As do the headlights of cars coming heading west. At night, Filomena's window is in the shadows.

Um, that photo isn't taken form the street, but from the car park which has height.

This one is much better for a perspective, download the PowerPoint: WATER ONLY FLOWS DOWNHILL


It is worth remembering, the cottage was broken into twice while it was sealed (after the investigation was complete) and both of those times were through the kitchen window on the balcony. There's a reason for that.
 
  • #812
In fact they kinda have to in the Italian System, don't they? They have to write a Motivations Report summarizing all the evidence against the accused. Then it goes automatically to the appeals court, which then reads it along with the defense appeal documents. This happens for every single crime of this nature which isn't fast-tracked, and as I'm sure you heard, a lot of them get overturned.

In this case, they relied on a lot of dubious 'evidence,' which Giancarlo Massei had to spend pages and pages trying to establish as legitimate and relevant. I'm betting he didn't want to do that, in fact he might have envied Michaeli getting to write Rudy Guede's Motivations, I don't think they were paid by the page. So if Massei has to continuously accept low probability scenarios, and even those which defy known scientific principles, it's probably a pretty good hint the wrong verdict was reached. He might even know that as he's writing it, you can kinda tell the way he just piles bilge on top of the cesspool which is what the 11:40 time of death argument amounts to.

Hellmann is not bound to any of these arguments. He's free to dismiss the luminol stains as meaningless, which is what they very probably are, being as they tested negative for blood and a fair number resemble abstract art rather than the foot or shoe prints they're supposed to be. The judge in the trial of the first instance is bound to try to make a way for the evidence to work if a verdict is reached, he can't just throw up his hands, tell the world 'I can't write a Motivations Report using this evidence! Sorry, I didn't realize how silly the case is! Let 'em go!' Instead he tries to think of a way it could still possibly work, which is what he did all the way through the report on every single piece of physical 'evidence.'

Perhaps that's the part that's confusing you, the silly theories in Massei are just indications of how poor the verdict is and how the evidence doesn't support the conviction. They're not set in stone, and where they conflict with observed scientific principles, logic, and probability, Hellmann is highly likely to choose the more rational explanation. Massei couldn't, he was bound by the verdict and had to try to make it work, Hellmann gets to see how silly it was and not make the same mistake twice!


As opposed to low probability scenarios like Amanda and Raffaele padding around the cottage barefoot in turnip juice? Or contamination by 'dust'? Low probability scenarios like that?
 
  • #813
I guess this could technically be viewed as either a non-existant telephone call or a non-existent time for a call. Either way you view it there was no call made at the time Comodi indicated

There was....Amanda had called home at 12:45.
 
  • #814
Although not the AK case this is simply a must read. Mods I know this is off topic but yet relevant. I hope some take the time to read all 17 pages


"Just before Willingham received the lethal injection, he was asked if he had any last words. He said, 'The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for twelve years for something I did not do. From God’s dust I came and to dust I will return, so the Earth shall become my throne.' ”

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...?currentPage=1
 
  • #815
wasnt_me and a number of us have done extensive research including the reading of Massei's Report :)


I suggest a few more read throughs then, just to be on the safe side ;)
 
  • #816
How odd yet when the experts tried to find same said scratch they could not. They did though test the spot for blood and as I am sure you are aware it tested negative. SV provided those results for you

They didn't examine it under a lamp.

Of course it tested negative for blood...the amount of Material on the knife was too low for the sensitivity of a blood test, even more so since Dr Stefanoni had already removed most of the material that was on the knife for a DNA test. Blood tests are not sensitive enough for volumes that small. That's in the Massei Report that you say you've read by the way.
 
  • #817
Interesting. If I am understanding this correctly "clues" carry more weight than "fact". Have not played that game in years (Clue that is)


Clues are not relevant when it comes to deduction?
 
  • #818
:floorlaugh::floorlaugh::floorlaugh:

OMG too funny!!! I gather then there is no cite for this thus I don't need to ask for one lol

Um...the link she gave you in her post is a 'cite'. More detail still can be found on PMF (that's another cite by the way).
 
  • #819
Thanks, it is a commonly misunderstood document. You'd think the fact there is an automatic appeal and so many verdicts in the trial of the first instance are overturned ought to suggest to most that what's contained in that Motivations Report cannot be immutable by that fact alone.

Alas, not.


Actually, the purpose of the appeal is simply to afford the defence an opportunity to challenge the content of the document. It is not an acknowledgement that the document is likely to be wholly incorrect.

And actually, not a very high number of convictions are overturned on appeal...the figure is 11% (by the final appeal)...I wouldn't call that very high.
 
  • #820
Again, you just point at the scientific part. There is no point in that. I already explained that there is a difference between scientists and judges. If the scientific part is not conclusive then judges are free to use their own reasoning (by putting things in context for example) and to draw their own conclusions. It is not unusual. In fact, that is their job.

So basically what you are saying is, believe in the science up to the point where it supports my bias (i.e. the science confirms the presence of both of their DNA) but then ignore the science as soon as it stops supporting my bias (i.e. that the substance was probably not blood) and then fall back on conjecture.

No wonder you still believe she is guilty with logic circuits as faulty as that. Someone call the android engineer, we've got a malfunction.
 
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