McJustice

Karma: 16

McJustice 3 Jan 2010 0:49 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Jack’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
It is odd that after 4 days of taping all their phone calls and also the interviews during that time that they completely forgot to record the big one the night of the 5th & 6th. The one where Mignini was orchestrating the proceedings, and Giobbi was in the next room (presumably working his pseudo-science Behavioral Analysis Interview demeanor magic interpretation of the whole thing. 36 police were in the room along with Mignini...they all signed as witnesses… the typewritten Italian police legalese “spontaneous confession” doc.(why so many? to keep her company?) Mignini running out of time (he knew from the telephone calls that Amanda’s mother was coming and that she might possibly get Amanda to the US embassy or out of the country. they had no grounds to hold her… they needed a confession and they knew they could get one and they did. The police had the investigator’s hunch leading them to believe that they had a guilty person to break down… even though there was no physical evidence. And that was the problem they had the theory before any evidence and seem to have been stringing the interviews along while they waited for the strong evidence they were convinced was there… and yet no DNA, no fingerprints… nothing… but they were so sure… Giobbi the mindreading expert from Rome and Mignini the famous Prosecutor and the policewoman duo were so convinced and they set the tone and the rest of the police believed them… nobody was trying to railroad innocent people Miginini and the rest took off running based on a gut feeling and pseudo science. (and add to that an African hair sample and a misinterpreted text message from an African)

The police do tend to cut corners when they are convinced a person is guilty… that is when they can justify putting the screws on and they if they were really sure about someone they could make you or I or anyone seem “unreliable”, a person who changes their story… a liar…

McJustice 3 Jan 2010 0:30 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Jack’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
I have not seen any evidence for a staged break in in Filomena’s bedroom. And none was presented that was believable. A video was shown that appeared to show out of focus bits of glass on a dress… the idea being that the room was ransacked first and then glass fell on top from a staged window break. The problem with the blobs in the video was that they were not glass but polka dots on a an article of clothing as shown by other pictures of the same things. There is only Mignini’s claim that it was based on the notion that nobody could have climbed in the window as well as him probably not liking it much since it did not fit his multi-person satanic orgy murder theory. And it is impressive that the alleged stager was so clever they managed to get glass only inside the room along with the rock… and as for nothing missing. Rudy liked to take money, phones, laptops and other things… From the burglaries we know of ( and allegations that he rifled through girls purses at Discos besides hassling the girls as well) he did not seem to take bulky items or valuable items like jewelry that could be fenced. We are not told what he did not take and cannot judge the value or utility of stealing them. He evidently did not find money there but he did later steal Meredith’s rent money since his bloody fingerprints are on her purse. He did have money to spend at the disco and to flee to Germany and survive there for 2 weeks and the assumption is that it was Meredith’s.

He may have been interrupted by Meredith coming home and after that had little interest in going back to a room he had already searched and did not find any money or items he may have wanted. After getting Meredith’s money and raping her body and cleaning up (and he had over 2 or 3 hours to do all this) it is understandable he had less interest in rummaging through the other bedrooms and left to go to the Disco. He apparently stank according to the people who say him there so evidently did not go to his own flat first to shower.

McJustice 3 Jan 2010 0:06 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Blueberry’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
Why not by Guede? There is no evidence of him leaving right away only supposition. He was next seen at 2AM in a Disco. He is a known burglar and his bloody fingerprints are on Meredith’s purse and also he had expressed interest in Meredith to other people prior to that night. He was there for money and also for sex if he could get it. It is perfectly consistent with what is know that he could have stayed and carried out his probable 2nd intention… having sex with her… something he could only accomplish after she died. After a clean up of the mess left when a recently deceased person relaxes certain muscles and voids waste which took long enough for blood to dry and certain marks to become fixed on the body. He may have gone to the other toilet during this time. After a while he returned to her the bra strap was cut and her body rearranged to facilitate sex. He wore condoms and left internal DNA traces either from his fingers or from the outer surface of the condom from when he handled it… After that he did a quick clean of himself and the bathroom.… it is interesting that the people who saw him at the disco later stated that he STANK.

There are no bloody footprints that match Amanda’s. None. No blood found on alleged footprints in the hall therefore not linked to the murder. The shoeprint in the bedroom originally thought to match her shoe size were on cloth that had a crease that made the print appear shorter and it later was found to be consistent with the distinctive shoes that Guede wore. The bloody print on the bathmat has toe and arch characteristics that are again consistent with Guede’s and not the others.

Besides the original coroner’s conclusion was that there was only one attacker. He was fired from the case and replaced by a new coroner who had a new finding more in agreement with Mignini’s theory of a group attack.

McJustice 2 Jan 2010 23:41 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Unknowns’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
Those who say Guede left quickly and therefore was not around to remove the bra, shift the body later and place the cover over her after the blood was dried… forget that she was killed resisting rape and he very likely stayed to complete what he started.

Rudy had plenty of time before he was seen at 2AM in the Disco to first clean up the mess that would have been in the way for what he did next (and by that I mean not only blood but the results of relaxed bowels and urethra) cut off her bra and lay her on her back adjusting where she lay so that he could enjoy what he set out to do originally. That is have sex with her… and he used condoms. And then still time to clean himself up, swab the obvious signs in the bathroom, throw the cover on her and lock the door.

The patrons at the disco who saw him dancing between 2 and 4 AM said he stank very badly....

McJustice 2 Jan 2010 23:20 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Sebastian_Hagen’s comment on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom
About LCN DNA… only the UK currently approves that kind of evidence in a trial BUT they have an extremely strict set of standards on how to run those kinds of tests AND require a very expensive specially built and equipped lab. There are very few DNA labs in the entire world that comply. And there are not many properly trained “experts” who are certified to carry it out. I should mention that none of those labs happen to be in Italy and the Italian technician was not trained or certified to do it. Also her boss in the lab worked as a paid consultant for Mignini at times and there is the implication that she was under the gun to come up with results.

All her original DNA tests showed no DNA on the knife at all. Only when she circumvented the built-in limits in the equipment and without doing any of the recommended calibration for false positives and running a lot more amplification runs did she finally come up with partial matches in a very statistically noisy result. And even then great care must be taken in interpreting the results which are much more liable to contamination than standard DNA tests. And even at this point the results with her “interpretation” of the results only yields suggestion of Meredith’s DNA… not blood. And this is important: If the knife was cleaned with bleach there would be no DNA but blood would still be detectable. And blood was not detected. The test for blood is very sensitive and it is very hard to eliminate all blood traces and yet there was no blood. That implies strongly that whatever DNA was detected was contamination and a weak result open to interpretation. Her DNA test reports as presented to the court are not complete so the entire process she used for all of these key tests is not available for review. Additionally the court did not allow defense DNA experts to testify about the faults in the prosecution’s DNA evidence.

Italian judges have poor understanding of forensics and tend to accept unquestioningly the results of government forensic labs.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/12/10/can_anyone_get_a_fair_trial_in_italy “For one, they say that coerced confessions and the use of dubious forensic evidence, as might have happened in the Knox case, are way too common. “Inquiries are conducted without any reliable methods,” says Roberto Malini, president of EveryOne, a nongovernmental organization that defends ethnic minorities in jail. “Tests take place solely in the laboratories of the state police. There’s no independent lab, and independent observers do not have access to the police’s work.”

“Legal experts also share concerns about Italy’s bar for admissibility. Il Giornale, a conservative newspaper, for instance, recently published an interview with Marco Morin, a Venice-based firearms expert who declared he no longer wanted to work in Italian courts. “In the United States, federal judges must study a 637-page manual in order to be able to evaluate [forensic] evidence,” he told the newspaper. “Here, they accept everything without questioning, as long as it comes from the institutional laboratory.”