Meredith Kercher case

[John Hacker]

To be fair, you might not be unable... just unwilling. Either way, it's hard to take it seriously. If the evidence is that strong it shouldn't be difficult.

[caz]

Ah so it's bad of me to infer things you didn't say but you are free to do it? I didn't say the McCanns were "wholly" responsible. I said they were responsible. In some cases responsibility for an atrocity is SHARED.

I know what you said, Ally. But I didn’t quote you directly in my response, hence the lack of quote marks. Your exact words were (and I quote this time):

‘The McCanns were RESPONSIBLE for what happened to their daughter, whether they killed her or not. Their negligence and their neglect of her allowed what happened to occur’.

It was presumptuous of me to infer from this that you held the McCanns “wholly” responsible for the negligence and neglect (ie their 'behaviour') that allowed what happened to occur.

Which is why I wrote:

‘You did argue in one breath that the McCanns were wholly responsible for the behaviour that led to a bad person taking their daughter and ruining all their lives.’

If I inferred too much, perhaps you can explain how they were only partly responsible for their negligence and neglect.

Or is all that mockery and scorn you specialise in playing havoc with your concentration?

But what precisely are you arguing here? On the one hand, you are condemning her because she couldn't control her behavior or behave decorously but you are saying it's because she's a nutjob who slashes women's throats that she can't maintain decorum? So anyone who behaves inappropriately is a nutjob and only nutjobs slashers are inappropriate?

Why ask me, if you are going to keep inventing what I'm 'arguing' out of fresh air?

When a man argues that she's guilty, no big. But if a women argues it, suddenly it's cause she's their BFF and "a chick taken under the wing" and other such bullshit. How about I just don't agree that the evidence is sufficient to convict. I have said all along she may well be guilty but the EVIDENCE is lacking. I am not the one behaving or responding on emotion that would be you all. You have yet to put forth a solid, logical fact base case for her guilt and still rely on nothing more than cartwheels and kisses as your "evidence" of her guilt.

Here we go again. Where have I ever argued that Knox is guilty?

Where have I ever said the evidence is 'sufficient to convict'?

I said in my first post that: 'I would need to know more about the evidence, including the DNA findings, before giving a personal opinion'. I was still asking about those DNA findings in the post you were responding to above.

Caz, do you believe that anything collected 46 days after the initial crime that has been proven to have been moved from the time the police first examined the crime scene to the time it was collected with no explanation of how or when it was moved, can possibly be considered untainted evidence?

Not by me personally, no. The jury concluded that it was Sollecito’s DNA on that bra clasp and that it could not reasonably have got on the victim’s bra clasp innocently or been transferred there accidentally via a third party. But it’s something that his defence team have plenty of time to work on before the first appeal.

When you add in there is no forensic case whatsoever, there is no actual evidence whatsoever that directly links Knox or Sollecito to the murder, you know exactly what did convict this girl: general dislike for her and her behavior and lifestyle.

This is what you wrote yesterday.

And here again is what you wrote earlier this month, on December 3:

I am somewhat torn. When I first heard about the case, I was pretty much convinced of her guilt based on some of the similar things you mentioned: conflicting stories, etc…

…It is hard to find clear evidence over here one way or the other.

And that was in response to this from me:

I would need to know more about the evidence, including the DNA findings, before giving a personal opinion, but it does seem that Knox has told several conflicting stories about the awful events of that night, which would be a silly thing to do if she wasn't involved and was just trying to protect her boyfriend.

Nowhere have I given that personal opinion yet. And ‘silly’ does not translate to ‘guilty’ in any language I know. It's just always silly not to tell a straight story, end of. Whacks round the head, days of intensive questioning in a language you barely know, all out torture, you name it - if you were somewhere else all night and don’t know anything, you say that, only that, and you keep on saying it. Sollecito had no language problems, so if he never left his flat that night and had no reason to suppose that the girlfriend keeping him company there had slipped out quietly at any point to commit murder without telling him, he could have said so and stuck with it too.

But something, which included Knox’s conflicting stories (ie her behaviour after the event), was enough for you to rush with indecent haste, on ‘first’ hearing ‘about the case’, to a position of being ‘pretty much convinced of her guilt’.

And you think you can afford to lecture me about rushing unarmed to judgement, when I've judged nothing yet? You’re the one who went from being pretty much convinced that Knox was a murderess, based on God knows what, to the certainty that you got it totally wrong and there never was any evidence against her. Well I wonder how that could have happened, to someone with a habit of reading things into my posts that were never there? In case you really hadn’t noticed, I’m still considering what is evidence in this case and what isn’t, just as I was back in November 2007, when we all knew considerably less about it. If you were so prepared to believe Knox guilty in the early days, before you could have known even a handful of verified facts, isn’t it a bit rich to make false assumptions about what I am prepared to believe and why?

Science is not a case where you listen to two sides and use judgement.

Unfortunately, John, that is precisely what most juries are obliged to do: listen to the 'experts' for both the prosecution and the defence and then use their personal judgement. I don't know about juries tending to place weight on the prosecution experts over the defence 'as a matter of course'. Maybe that's why the defence always goes last in the summing up, so every last argument for reasonable doubt will still be ringing in their ears when they retire to consider their verdict. The problem here is that the crime took place in Italy, not in the US or Britain, so if it's admissible in Italy it's admissible in this case. At least they don't have the death penalty.

Hopfully some day we'll have more to work with, but for now I am comfortable asking questions based on what we do know.

Me too. That’s why I wouldn’t be comfortable rushing to judgement yet either way.

DNA testing is expensive. Very much so. As DNA cannot be seen with the naked eye, tests are going to be performed on object that it is likely that someone involved with the crime had touched. Because it was the actual crime scene, a LOT more testing would have been performed in Kercher's room.

The test that found DNA in Filomena's room was on a blood trace. That's the sort of thing that they WILL test. Because the blood effectively dates it to the night of the murder.

DNA can innocently transferred by a number of means, but it's not typically falling off you at every moment. Knox had lived there a while and had plenty of opportunity to shed hair, skin, saliva, whatever. Guede, not so much.

I don't believe Filomena reported anything missing, I would be more inclined to thing Guede went back afterwards to wipe up fingerprints rather than look for stuff to tie him to the crime. Leaving fingerprints at a petty burglery is one thing, but when you've got a corpse on your hands you want to make sure you clean what you can.

That was my point too - DNA is not typically falling off you at every moment. And yet, when they tested the blood trace in Filomena’s room, and found it came from Meredith, it just happened to be mixed with DNA from Knox, and none from Guede or even Filomena. Knox hadn’t lived in the house that long, but how many times had she been in Filomena’s room? Once? Twice? A dozen times? In short, how much opportunity was there for Knox to shed ‘hair, skin, saliva, whatever’ in Filomena’s room? And what are the chances of turning up a random falling off of Knox’s DNA when conducting one of the few tests in that room, on Meredith’s blood trace? What if Knox had never been in there before to Filomena’s knowledge? What then?

We know that Guede must have had plenty of opportunity to shed his DNA in there if he was the one who moved Filomena’s clothing while apparently rummaging through it, in addition to taking Meredith’s blood in there on his person. If he only went back there to wipe up his own fingerprints, he must have done a perfect job as none were found.

The blood on the bathmat would be clearly visible to anyone cleaning the floor. It was not that faint. The point I was getting at is that someone going to the shower isn't going to be looking at the floor, where as someone right on the floor could not miss it.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I always look at the bathmat as I step out of the shower onto it. So I would certainly notice any bloodstain on it that would be impossible to miss while cleaning the floor. But I’m not sure where this gets us, as different people obviously have different bathroom habits, and it’s not even clear that anyone with knowledge of the murder did clean the floor. If they did, they saw the stain on the mat and left it there. If they didn’t, they may not have seen or cared about any blood traces they were leaving. So I don't see how it suggests any individual's innocence or guilt. If that's what you meant, I agree with you!

In the case of the clasp they conceended that there was the DNA of several individuals that it was certainly possible resulted from contamination, but not Sollecito... ummm... just cause. (A bed rock argument for the prosecution and it's supporters)

Not sure what you are saying here. Any DNA presumed to have come from individuals who examined the scene and handled the clasp at different times would be classed as ‘contamination’. Ditto with anyone else who could reasonably have left their DNA on it innocently, such as Meredith herself, when fastening her bra. With testing being so expensive, I doubt they’d try and match up all the DNA profiles with all the investigators, as long as they could detect or exclude the suspects’ profiles from their findings. We know that the bra was removed by someone involved, with the clasp becoming detached, so this person was almost certainly among those who handled it. So where is his DNA, if this was not Sollecito? And it still has to be explained how Sollecito could reasonably have left his own DNA on the clasp on an earlier occasion, or alternatively how easy it would have been for a third party to pick it up from elsewhere (eg on their shoes?) and accidentally contaminate the clasp with enough to be identified as Sollecito’s.

This sounds too much like the Hanratty arguments for comfort. In his case, we have three people’s DNA found on the victim’s knicker fragment after 40 years: hers, her lover’s and Hanratty’s. So the arguments range from the results being faked on behalf of the establishment, to Hanratty’s getting there innocently via a contamination event, while the real rapist’s semen must have done a Houdini impression and degraded entirely or been on a different part of the knickers.

Testing of samples that small requires all sorts of precautions that were not done in this case. The lab should be positively pressurized, no other samples should be present in the lab, blank samples should be run through the machine to check for contamination prior to running real ones.

Then it’s a pity the guy you quoted didn’t have the courage of his own convictions and make that crystal clear. Why did he use language like: this ‘doesn’t appear’ to have been done in this case, if it was 'not done' in this case? Why did he say the same lab ‘may’ also have been running DNA profiles from other evidence in the case at the same time, and if so tiny amounts of this ‘could’ have contaminated the knife samples, if the lab was running other samples at the same time, and they were bound to contaminate the knife samples? That was all I was questioning really. It’s especially important not to beat about the bush if the Italian standard is that "unless contamination is proved it didn't happen". But thanks for the ‘technical waters’ lesson anyway. I already got my 100 yards swimming certificate re LCN DNA on the A6 thread and nobody’s managed to hold me under yet or blind me with the scientific spray.

Love,

Caz
X

[Ally]

[QUOTE=caz;111655]

Which is why I wrote:

‘You did argue in one breath that the McCanns were wholly responsible for the behaviour that led to a bad person taking their daughter and ruining all their lives.’

If you had written THEIR behavior then I would agree with what you wrote. The behavior that led to a bad person taking their daughter is solely the responsibility of the bad person in question

Here we go again. Where have I ever argued that Knox is guilty?

Ah. Let's see: "How about the rights of British students living in a foreign country not to be foully murdered in a drug-crazed sex attack?" If it wasn't the alleged drug and sex crazed attack the prosecutors were alleging against Knox and Co. then what "drug" crazed attack were you referring to? If you don't believe Kercher was killed in a drug crazed sex attack then why say this?

How about this statement: "However corrupt people in America think the Italian police are, I simply don’t get how a completely innocent woman would have been pressured into making up a story involving her being an ear witness in that house if she was with her boyfriend in his flat all night and knew nothing until the police had found Meredith."

If you don't believe she was guilty, you are certainly doing your best to lend that impression so I feel quite comfortable arguing from that perspective.

Where have I ever said the evidence is 'sufficient to convict'?

Well you did say that the evidence was sufficient for the jury to convict and that the defense had failed to produce reasonable doubt, which is basically the same thing.

Not by me personally, no. The jury concluded that it was Sollecito’s DNA on that bra clasp and that it could not reasonably have got on the victim’s bra clasp innocently or been transferred there accidentally via a third party. But it’s something that his defence team have plenty of time to work on before the first appeal.

Which is interesting. Everyone OUTSIDE the courtroom (who has half a rational brain) seems to think this is crap evidence. But then they also want to argue that there was sufficient evidence and the jury wasn't biased and all sorts of things that don't seem to add up. There is NO explanation for how the bra strap was moved so how could it reasonably be considered untainted by a jury, when we don't know who, what, where, how or why the strap ended up being moved? I mean presuming we are dealing with a jury that's not biased and all.....

Sollecito had no language problems, so if he never left his flat that night and had no reason to suppose that the girlfriend keeping him company there had slipped out quietly at any point to commit murder without telling him, he could have said so and stuck with it too.

Wait. I am confused. So much is being made of Knox having lied, are you actually proposing Sollecito SHOULD have lied? I mean if he really was drugged and had no idea whatsoever whether Knox had left the building or not, he should have lied if he had no clue? As far as I am aware he said he couldn't remember and didn't know whether she'd left the flat. So what are you proposing he should have said differently?

But something, which included Knox’s conflicting stories (ie her behaviour after the event), was enough for you to rush with indecent haste, on ‘first’ hearing ‘about the case’, to a position of being ‘pretty much convinced of her guilt’.

I also believed they had actual real DNA evidence from untainted sources. However, in looking into the case, I have found that not to be the case and I don't actually BELIEVE any of the DNA results as being sufficient to proceed to TRIAL much less a conviction. So that is what has changed. I first heard and heard they had DNA evidence which pointed towards her involvement. When the facts have shaken out, I've found that not to be the case. When you read that the prosecution is claiming that they have the murder weapon with the accused DNA on it, you tend to accept it because it's hard, in today's society to believe that the prosecution would bare face lie like that. Which appears to be what they in fact did.

Well I wonder how that could have happened, to someone with a habit of reading things into my posts that were never there?

Nah they were there, you just want to argue while maintaining plausible deniability by saying you haven't made up your mind yet. You do it constantly and it' sa tactic that has served you well especially on the Diary threads, fiercy arguing a stance while maintaining neutrality. However, one reading your posts can get a pretty good idea of where you stand. From day one, you have been arguing her guilt by putting in statements like "why would an innocent woman do this..." and accepting the prosecutions premise that Meredith was killed in a drug and sex attack which seems a weird thing to accept if you haven't made up your mind about Knox's guilt considering the drug and sex attack theory hinges on her.

[John Hacker]

Unfortunately, John, that is precisely what most juries are obliged to do: listen to the 'experts' for both the prosecution and the defence and then use their personal judgement. I don't know about juries tending to place weight on the prosecution experts over the defence 'as a matter of course'. Maybe that's why the defence always goes last in the summing up, so every last argument for reasonable doubt will still be ringing in their ears when they retire to consider their verdict. The problem here is that the crime took place in Italy, not in the US or Britain, so if it's admissible in Italy it's admissible in this case. At least they don't have the death penalty.

When there is a valid scientific basis for testing, yes the defense can challange the results, the protocols, etc. But this is not the same thing, this is equivilent to putting a phrenologist or graphologist on the stand. Once she discarded science and picked the peaks to keep and discard it has no validity. You might as well try and get a DNA match from looking at tea leaves.

And as far as the deference given prosecutors I think your own comment sums it up nicely:

What else would you expect the defence to raise? If they can't reasonably dispute whose DNA is indicated, they have to go for contamination. If the contamination arguments aren’t wholly convincing, they are obliged to dispute the identification. Where at all possible, both arguments are used to sow vital seeds of doubt in the jury's mind about the robustness of the science and the handling of the evidence. You should see the cartwheels they turn on the A6 thread trying to explain away the DNA evidence. It’s what the defence does, even in cases where the evidence is overwhelming. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

People expect the defense to contest the evidence and go into it with the mindset you showed about.

That was my point too - DNA is not typically falling off you at every moment. And yet, when they tested the blood trace in Filomena’s room, and found it came from Meredith, it just happened to be mixed with DNA from Knox, and none from Guede or even Filomena. Knox hadn’t lived in the house that long, but how many times had she been in Filomena’s room? Once? Twice? A dozen times? In short, how much opportunity was there for Knox to shed ‘hair, skin, saliva, whatever’ in Filomena’s room?

We don't know that none came from Filomena, but I think it's safe to assume if Guede's had been there we'd have heard about it. My understanding from reading courtroom reports is that DNA samples/footprints were never taken from any of the other members of the flat.

As long as people are walking around the place, DNA will move around on shoes, etc. It's not strictly necessary for the DNA to be deposited there, it may not have feet, but it will ride them.

And what are the chances of turning up a random falling off of Knox’s DNA when conducting one of the few tests in that room, on Meredith’s blood trace? What if Knox had never been in there before to Filomena’s knowledge? What then?

Would matter in the slightest as I indicated above. :-) But what are the odds? We'll never know. No control experiments were done on the environment. If they tested a half dozen random areas of floor and found Knox's DNA nowhere, that would make their evidence far more credible. If it turned up several times (as seems likely) it would have pointed out how worthless their testing was.

We know that Guede must have had plenty of opportunity to shed his DNA in there if he was the one who moved Filomena’s clothing while apparently rummaging through it, in addition to taking Meredith’s blood in there on his person. If he only went back there to wipe up his own fingerprints, he must have done a perfect job as none were found.

I doubt there was much DNA testing of the clothes (an ommission) but as far as fingerprints go, how hard would it be to wipe down the sill and a few handles? I doubt he was fondling things at random.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I always look at the bathmat as I step out of the shower onto it. So I would certainly notice any bloodstain on it that would be impossible to miss while cleaning the floor. But I’m not sure where this gets us, as different people obviously have different bathroom habits, and it’s not even clear that anyone with knowledge of the murder did clean the floor. If they did, they saw the stain on the mat and left it there. If they didn’t, they may not have seen or cared about any blood traces they were leaving. So I don't see how it suggests any individual's innocence or guilt. If that's what you meant, I agree with you!

Yep, we're more or less on the same page here. But I can't reconcile the idea of the floor being cleaned AND the mat being left. That seems nonsensical to me.

[QUOTE=caz;111655]Not sure what you are saying here. Any DNA presumed to have come from individuals who examined the scene and handled the clasp at different times would be classed as ‘contamination’. Ditto with anyone else who could reasonably have left their DNA on it innocently, such as Meredith herself, when fastening her bra. With testing being so expensive, I doubt they’d try and match up all the DNA profiles with all the investigators, as long as they could detect or exclude the suspects’ profiles from their findings.[/QUOTE=caz;111655]

All of the crime scene techs DNA is on file and was excluded from being the source of the extra profiles on the clasp. The most likely source of the contamination appears to be from the environment itself. When something (particularly cloth) has been moving around on the floor it will pick up traces from it.

Again, some control tests on the floor here would have been helpful.

We know that the bra was removed by someone involved, with the clasp becoming detached, so this person was almost certainly among those who handled it. So where is his DNA, if this was not Sollecito? And it still has to be explained how Sollecito could reasonably have left his own DNA on the clasp on an earlier occasion, or alternatively how easy it would have been for a third party to pick it up from elsewhere (eg on their shoes?) and accidentally contaminate the clasp with enough to be identified as Sollecito’s.

As the clasp was cut off instead of unclasped, we don't know that hands would have even been necessary to do so. As it was apparently done AFTER death, it's possible whoever did so was smart enough to wrap their fingers to not leave prints on the metal of the clasp. There are lots of possibilities.

The bottom line is we know there is contamination on that piece of evidence. The question is why should we assume that Sollocito's was there as a result of direct action as opposed to the contamination caused by sloppy evidence collection and handling?

This sounds too much like the Hanratty arguments for comfort. In his case, we have three people’s DNA found on the victim’s knicker fragment after 40 years: hers, her lover’s and Hanratty’s. So the arguments range from the results being faked on behalf of the establishment, to Hanratty’s getting there innocently via a contamination event, while the real rapist’s semen must have done a Houdini impression and degraded entirely or been on a different part of the knickers.

I've never followed the Haratty case, so I don't see the applicability here. In this case however it's clear that contamination of the scene has occured and Sollecito HAD been at the flat before so it's reasonable to assume he brought his DNA with him.

Then it’s a pity the guy you quoted didn’t have the courage of his own convictions and make that crystal clear. Why did he use language like: this ‘doesn’t appear’ to have been done in this case, if it was 'not done' in this case? Why did he say the same lab ‘may’ also have been running DNA profiles from other evidence in the case at the same time, and if so tiny amounts of this ‘could’ have contaminated the knife samples, if the lab was running other samples at the same time, and they were bound to contaminate the knife samples?"

The problem there is that Dr Stefaoni, who performed the tests has been less that forthcoming with details of testing. For instance, she has yet to tell what days each item was tested so it's impossible to tell if tests of different samples were occurring simultaenously.

I can't imagine why she has not provided the information, but the latest report I saw on that was a couple of months ago and at that point it had not been made available to the defense.

That was all I was questioning really. It’s especially important not to beat about the bush if the Italian standard is that "unless contamination is proved it didn't happen". But thanks for the ‘technical waters’ lesson anyway. I already got my 100 yards swimming certificate re LCN DNA on the A6 thread and nobody’s managed to hold me under yet or blind me with the scientific spray.

If you think there's any possibility that the knife test should be considered valid I tend to doubt that last statement. :-D

Peace.

[John Hacker]

Well, Guede's appeal has gone to the judges. There should be a ruling in the next few hours. It will be interesting (not relevent to Knox/Sollecito) to see what, if anything, the judges have to say. I can't imagine they'll reverse the verdict, but he might get his sentence reduced to be more in line with the others.

[John Hacker]

According to TJ.org his appeal got his sentenced knocked down to 16 years. Absolutely absurd.

[jason_c]

According to TJ.org his appeal got his sentenced knocked down to 16 years. Absolutely absurd.

John,

For once on this thread we agree.

[Ally]

Sixteen years! so much for Italian justice taking the rape and murder of a girl seriously. My god. Absolutely appalling. I guess testifying for the prosecution has its rewards. Despite the fact that he's the only one linked definitively to the rape and murder and he has yet to accept ANY responsibility for it, he'll be a free man in a decade.

Who knew justice weighed a life at so little cost?

[Archaic]

Guede's SentenceCcut In Half

Hi, guys.

Yes, Guede's sentence has been reduced to just 16 years; here's the news article.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/12/22/italy.kercher.murder.american/index.html

The Italian Govt. seems to feel that a mere 16 years is an adequate sentence for the horrible murder of Meredith Kercher.

It makes me sick. If Guede is guilty he should be in prison for life with no possibility of parole.

So much for Italian Justice.

Does anybody really believe that this is any kind of justice for Meredith?

Best regards, Archaic

[cappuccina]

Well, yes, of course the people here who say that any behavior is acceptable in any situation would have no problem with his sentence being reduced, obviously...

[John Hacker]

Well, yes, of course the people here who say that any behavior is acceptable in any situation would have no problem with his sentence being reduced, obviously...

If someone had said that, you'd have a point. Why don't you go troll somewhere else if you have nothing of value to contribute?

[Archaic]

The more I think about this, the more I see the massive reduction of Guede's sentence as an insult to the memory of his victim, Merdith Kercher.

>> Does anyone know if Guede will eligible for parole in 8 years or 10 years?

I think we can all agree that the possibility of such a thing is utterly appalling.

Best regards, Archaic

[Malkmus]

Interesting article focusing on Mignini as the centerpiece of Amanda Knox's upcoming appeal:

http://www.examiner.com/x-32288-Spokane-Elections-2010-Examiner~y2010m1d2-Questions-mount-as-to-Prosecutor-Migninis-tactics-may-taint-Knox-result

[scarletpimpernel]

Darkness Descending

This is the title of a new book written by two British journalists Paul Russell, Graham Johnson and Luciano Garafano. It contains the full inside story of the crime. The book tells everything in minute detail about how the body was found and everything else like every blade of each grass. I do recommend this book.

[John Hacker]

Unsuprisingly Migini was found guilty of abuse of office and illegal wire tapping due to his behavior in the "Monster of Florence" case.

Whether this will have any affect on the Knox/Sollecito convictions has yet to be seen, but it does cast Migini in a pretty bad light and given his behavior on the Kercher case he was already looking pretty bad.