Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Euro Court Of Human Rights May Rule Tomorrow On Knox’s Much-Hyped “Appeal”

Posted by Machiavelli

Dr Guido Raimondi, Italian, current president of the Court

[Long post. Click here to go straight to Comments]

1. A Weak Submission By Knox Team At Best

Italian defence lawyers file more spurious “appeals” in Strasbourg than any other.

Knox’s “appeal” was filed by her lawyer Dalla Vedova FIVE-PLUS years ago. The ECHR saw nothing in it to cause haste. It was submitted following the Nencini appeal where the court, following Cassazione guidelines, had reiterated a very strong case and Knox’s guilt for murder was reaffirmed.

Since then Knox has been confirmed definitively guilty of calunnia, case closed, not subject to reversal, and she has served her three years. Also she was found not guilty of Meredith’s murder by the Fifth Chambers of Cassazione - which should not even have got into the evidence under law.

Here are our main past posts explaining the spurious nature of what Strasbourg received.

Click for Post:  Amanda Knox Lies Again To Get Herself Into Another European Court “But Really, Judge, Its Only PR” (Kermit)

Click for Post:  Note For Strasbourg Court & State Department: Knox Herself Proves She Lies About Her Interrogation (James Raper)

Click for Post:  Multiple Provably False Claims About “Forced Confession” Really Big Problem For Dalla Vedova & Knox (Finn MacCool)

Click for Post:  Knox’s Unsound Appeal To The European Court Of Human Rights Slapped Down By Cassation (Main Posters)

Click for Post:  Carlo Dalla Vedova, Is ECHR Made Aware Italian Law REQUIRES Lawyers To First File Local Complaints? (Main Posters)

Click for Post:  Carlo Dalla Vedova: Is ECHR Advised You Condoned Malicious Defamation By Knox Of Chief Prosecutor? (Main Posters)

Click for Post:  Bad News For Knox -  Buzz From Italy Is Spurious ECHR Appeal Will Probably Fail (Main Posters)

Click for Post:  Telling Non-Development For Knox Re The European Court Of Human Rights In Strasbourg (Main Posters)

2. My Takes On The ECHR Judges And Italy’s Role

Now, we know the ECHR response is on the docket for the court most likely Thursday the 24th (one of 48 cases) and if not then the 29th.

We DONT know if a full decision has been reached.  We cannot tell yet what the ECHR verdict will be. But we can tell in advance a few things, which we should point out:

1) The ECHR verdict will not be a “yes” or “no” response; that is, whatever kind of agreement the Court may find with Knox’s recourse, the pro-Knox advocates if any are left will try to make it look as if it was a full “yes” to Knox’s narrative while it is certain it will not endorse her fully if at all. In other words they could twist it and use it as a media stunt just to have the media reporting incline their way, and they won’t pay attention to any actual content;

2) How the ECHR rules, is something that depends on how the State Attorney of Italy in Rome decided to submit: if she decided to defend Italy’s position and on what points, to what degree. Therefore, the submission and outcome are basically political: they do not involve an applicant (Knox) against an independent party, but rather against a political entity (Italy) that may or may not offer a defense and if it does so, it may follow political criteria.

So the response does not depend very much on Knox’s telling the truth or not, but more on Italy’s political interest in “winning” the points or not.

For these reasons, while we know that there are legal and factual arguments to reject completely all of Knox’s claims - and to expose some of her claims as abusive - we actually don’t know exactly how much of an interest the State of Italy had in exposing her abusive arguments and defeating her points. We don’t know, for example, if the State Attorney worked to find and bring forth all key facts (see Part 1 above) and to submit all possible evidence to the Court.

The work of the Court is very indirect. They mostly don’t perform any actual fact finding directly. Rather they rely on organs of the State party to submit to them a report about the facts - and they certainly won’t have a way to discover any information that is missing in the reports (unless the other party pushes for that).
 
The ECHR Court does not actually assess the merits of a trial; it is no real “appeal” instance. The political nature of the “trial” thus is the reason why we don’t know what the Court will decide on each point; and it is also one of the reasons why the ECHR decision will be basically meaningless however pro or anti Knox.

3) The ECHR court in any case WILL NOT suggest (it cannot demand) any court review of all the steps of the case 2007-15 by the Italian courts.

The ECHR WILL NOT overturn the calunnia conviction. This should be absolutely clear: the calunnia conviction is definitive. Cassazione firmly closed it down. Knox is never going to be “cleared”. She is a convicted felon and will remain such for life.

Knox was also found beyond reasonable doubt by Cassazione to be present in the murder room when Meredith was killed, she washed her blood from her hands, and it is definitively established in Knox/Sollecito Bruno/Marasca ruling that Guede did not kill alone and Meredith was physically killed by more than one person.

It is also definitively recognized by the Bruno/Marasca ruling and also by subsequent rulings, that Knox and Sollecito are repetitive liars (“all their versions are lies”).

One reason why there will never be a trial review of Knox’s calunnia conviction is that Knox’s application to the ECHR actually willfully omits this component.

In other words, Knox simply does not want a second calunnia trial - probably mainly because her lawyers know that she would be found guilty again in a new trial, even if the “spontaneous statements” were considered inadmissible as evidence: there is sufficient evidence that she committed calunnia even without the 1:54 and 5.45 statements).

4) the Knox ECHR application contradicts Knox’s recollection of facts she gave in her book (one of the multiple version she gave), for example in the ECHR application she accuses “Perugian doctors” of performing a fake HIV test and leaking results to the media, while in her book she accuses an abusive prison guard.

5) it is to be pointed out that, independently from ECHR ruling, we can show that Knox’s application claims are false, contradicted by trial documents, and mostly contradicted by her own positions in the trial and subsequent statements. 

6) The President Judge of the Court panel is an Italian Magistrate, his name is Guido Raimondi, he is from Naples, and this is one of his last ruling before his retirement.

As our readers might guess, I am allergic to Neapolitan Magistrates who are by their last rulings just before retirement! But let’s wait and see (he might be a decent and honest person; I don’t like his position of link to the Naples Office though).

7)  I’d like to point out a peculiarity of Knox’s ECHR application: the only part among the claims that has some chance to be accepted by the Strasbourg Court, in my opinion, is the claim about alleged violations by the police, that is where Knox claims she was not “told” early enough she was a suspect by police officers and complains about not having a good interpreter.

Albeit there is no actual violation of Italian law, Dalla Vedova complains of some alleged violation of European rights and drops in a slippery, irregular request of “changes to the law”, rather than indicating any specific damages Knox would have allegedly suffered.

An interesting aspect of this, though, is that such a point of law raised by Dalla Vedova is only about alleged violations of legal principles in the prosecution for murder.

There is no request that could affect the course of the prosecution and trial for calunnia.

In other words, the Knox ECHR application might have some theoretical potential to find a violation or violations of Knox’s rights regarding her being investigated for murder. But it has no potential to affect the regularity of her being tried for calunnia.

No way the ECHR ruling could change the course that lead to calunnia finding, no way such conviction could be cancelled, and her ECHR application does not even contain a request that would dispute the legitimacy of such conviction.

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Major Anti-Mafia Success In Italy Is Making Skilled Italian Police In Demand Elsewhere

Posted by Peter Quennell

Gamechanger

The mafias really are gone from the United States and Canada, and in Italy it is mostly likewise.

So the mafias have been moving elsewhere - the UK, Germany, Netherlands, especially Malta - and Italian police are being invited to spearhead huge sweeps against them.

Hundreds of special forces arrested at least 84 men and women overnight in Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands in the largest-ever pan-European investigation into organized crime. Raids were also carried out in South America as part of the sting operation. More than three tons of cocaine and 140 kilograms of ecstasy were also seized, police said.

UK-based expert Felia Allum explains the organizational adjustments.

When I walk around London, I wonder how many of the busy nail bars, shops and restaurants are merely fronts for organised crime. For I was once told by a former member of the Neapolitan mafia: “The ambition for [an Italian] mafia member, is to go abroad, and particularly, England.”

They consider the UK to be an attractive destination because it is relatively easy to set up a company, and its legal system does not recognise “mafia membership” as a crime….

In 1991, British police based in Rome warned of the presence of Italian mafias in the UK. Two years later, the French parliament reported on the fight against the mafia’s attempt to penetrate France. Similar warnings were being made in the Netherlands.

But it wasn’t until 2012 that the European Parliament really addressed the situation. The following year, Europol (the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation) finally published an “Italian Organized Crime Threat Assessment”.

It attempted to fill the “important information gap” which exists around the activities of Italian mafias in Europe. As Europol itself noted, the “difficulty in collecting information” highlights the fact that mafias operate “under the radar” outside Italy.

Finally, in November 2018, Europol set up a specific operational network focusing on Italian mafia activities abroad, with the Italian Anti-Mafia Police playing a leading role.

Malta is fighting an influx similar to that in the Dominican Republic, a Raffaele Sollecito hangout till his uncle bought it.

Sunday, December 23, 2018

Tu Scendi Dalle Stelle! You Came Down From The Stars

Posted by Our Main Posters

One of the main Italian carols, one that just about everyone knows.

Monday, December 17, 2018

Today All Political Factions May Lurch US Justice One Big Step Toward Successful Italian Model

Posted by Peter Quennell

Culinary school inside a modern Italian prison

Overview

Justice reform was a popular issue in the national elections last month. Vox’s German Lopez describes the first step the US Senate will vote on today.

Who Is Affected

The bill, known as the First Step Act, would take modest steps to reform the criminal justice system and ease very punitive prison sentences at the federal level. It would affect only the federal system “” which, with about 181,000 imprisoned people, holds a small but significant fraction of the US jail and prison population of 2.1 million.

What Is In First Step

(1) The bill would make retroactive the reforms enacted by the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which reduced the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences at the federal level. This could affect nearly 2,600 federal inmates, according to the Marshall Project.

(2) The bill would take several steps to ease mandatory minimum sentences under federal law. It would expand the “safety valve” that judges can use to avoid handing down mandatory minimum sentences. It would ease a “three strikes” rule so people with three or more convictions, including for drug offenses, automatically get 25 years instead of life, among other changes. It would restrict the current practice of stacking gun charges against drug offenders to add possibly decades to prison sentences. All of these changes would lead to shorter prison sentences in the future.

(3) The bill would increase “good time credits” that inmates can earn. Inmates who avoid a disciplinary record can currently get credits of up to 47 days per year incarcerated. The bill increases the cap to 54, allowing well-behaved inmates to cut their prison sentence by an additional week for each year they’re incarcerated. The change applies retroactively, which could allow some prisoners “” as many as 4,000 “” to qualify for release the day that the bill goes into effect.

(4) The bill would allow inmates to get “earned time credits” by participating in more vocational and rehabilitative programs. Those credits would allow them to be released early to halfway houses or home confinement. Not only could this mitigate prison overcrowding, but the hope is that the education programs will reduce the likelihood that an inmate will commit another crime once released and, as a result, reduce both crime and incarceration in the long term. (There’s research showing that education programs do reduce recidivism.)

Comparison With Italy

On measures (1) and (2) Italy (which does not have the US’s gun problem or rate of murders) would remain far down the road with its short prison terms and small numbers locked up..

But measures (3) and (4) definitely represent convergence on rehabilitation being more useful (and cheaper) for society than grindingly extensive punitive stays.

Thursday, November 08, 2018

“A Couple of Millennials Trying to Grope Their Way Toward Adulthood…”

Posted by Hopeful

Mafia poodles Robinson & Kovite


The header is from a NY Times review of a book by the above pair, no irony intended (I presume).

Knox supports murderer Brendan Dassey and Avery, has a boyfriend who wears dark fingernail polish (some man!?), has a cat named Mr. Screams, and received a blue glass award from Arizona Public Defender Association in June 2018 “for sharing your inspiring story”.

You can’t make this stuff up (or can you), in Knox’s case the ultimate fantasist liar who has always wanted to mythologize her own life, she’s a born actress prostitute seeking to be Amelie but is Jekyll-Hyde and had to cannibalize Meredith’s clean life to morph into notoriety.

Now she links up with Christopher Robinson who can play paparazzi to her diabolical story while she allows him to wear the crazy hats, necklaces, fur and outlandish clothes that force her to become the opposite: Miss Demure, Miss Meredith, Miss Speaker at Innocence Conventions, Supporter of the Oppressed, Miss I-Know-the-Law, I have lived through controversy, I’m a Survivor, I am Wrongly Accused, I now dress modestly, this is my classy side,

I am allowing Chris to be the wild child of this use and be-used duo.  Chris wrote his first novel with good friend Kovite, an Army veteran, titled “War of the Encyclopaedists”. Now in May 2018 they’ve got a new book out called, “Deliver Us”. I think Chris may mean deliver us from evil as in Knox. And guess where the two friends met? In Italy.

Kovite writes for Salon:

Our collaboration began 10 years ago in rome on a pilgrimage to Keats’ grave as part of an undergraduate study abroad. We had known each other only a few weeks. While wandering through the Protestant Cemetery the names of the dead called out to us: Baltimore Gosshawk Wakefield III, Aeneas MacBean Esq. They were begging to be turned into characters is a pulp historical mystery novel. So we wrote one. It took us five years and it eventually ended up in a drawer but it taught us how to write…together. Over the last five years we applied those lessons to a more serious project, “War of the Encyclopaedists.” (Scribner, 2015)

“Several years ago as we struggled toward a finished draft of “War of the Encyclopaedists”, Chris fell into an existential pit. He was thinking about culinary school, his five-year relationship dissolved, he was living out of a suitcase at one artist colony after another, he wrote a collection of nihilistic sonnets, he was thinking about suicide. Without stability his options were limitless; he was paralyzed by choice….Gavin (Kovite) meanwhile was looking toward his future as a lawyer with dread. This wasn’t the life he’d imagined for himself. He had little time to play music or write fiction, which, though fun was a big additional burden, as anyone who has written while working fulltime well knows.”

“And yet here we are awaiting publication of our debut novel (this was in 2015)...Without Chris’ drive, organization and friendly harassment, Gavin would never have made the time to contribute. And without Gavin’s contribution, Christ would be staring into the void. It was writing a novel together ... that deepened our friendship, changed the course of our lives.”

from Salon, “Why write a collaborative novel? Well…why write alone?”

Christopher Robinson is a Boston University and Hunter College MFA graduate, a poet, a MacDowell Colony fellow, etc. His co-author Gavin Kovite was infantry platoon leader in Baghdad 2004-2005, then attended NYU Law, served as Army lawyer and is now a high school teacher….Together Robinson and Kovite authored “Encyclopaedists” and “Deliver Us”.

I just hope that Knox does not destroy their good relationship. It sounds like a Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson friendship of the minds. I think Knox will sabotage it and Chris was crazy to link up with her. Now he has his new novel out, “Deliver Us” about drones from Jeff Bezos dropping items on a futuristic Detroit and the question is “are they saviors to Detroit black low earners bringing jobs to the blighted city or imperialists out for their own gain?” as one book review said. I wonder if Kovite worried about this in Afghanistan?

But I think the hidden message of Chris Robinson’s “Deliver Us” is that he is questioning his Amanda Knox relationship (why not put a ring on it, Chris?) and already regrets slumming around. It’s a true cry of “deliver us from evil”. A bit late Chris. Do you even care if Knox killed Meredith or not?

Knox was to moderate the book launch of “Deliver Us” because of “her experience with controversy, competing narratives and commitment to racial justice in the Innocence Movement.” Barf. That was a book launch in May 2018 at Elliott Bay Book Co. in Seattle.

She will explode his life out of the water one day but more fool him for shacking up with a killer. It was Guermantes’ link to Chris Robinson Instagram that led me to look at some of his nonsense. I honestly believe he is mentally ill along with his live-in lover. Chris Robinson posts Instagram pix of multiple toilets out on some grassy area. He posts a piece of art of a woman on the toilet. He uses foul language constantly.

And michellesings1 (wife of this poodle) laughs at the trash they post. When their cat, Mr. Screams, sleeps on Amanda’s “bottom” she writes Hee hee, hilarious. When Knox gives a speech, michellesings1 chimes in, Love it, happy for you.

Monday, November 05, 2018

Most Popular Least Controversial Issue In US Elections? Surprise, Surprise: Justice Reform

Posted by Peter Quennell

1. Chronic Reform Problem Worldwide

First, consider Italy.

Compared to most countries, Italy is far down the road in terms of effective policing, courts and rehabilitation. Its crime rate is comparatively low.

But its relatively minor need to speed up the court system is hampered because the parties in parliament tend to lock up at the nitty-gritty level, and so nothing gets done. Very common around the world.

Now consider the US.

This political lockup tendency is made worse in the US because, almost alone among the world’s countries, the US tends to elect or politically appoint its police chiefs, prosecutors and judges. (Italy’s system is career-path wall-to-wall.)

This tends to result in a hard line. Meaning mass incarceration has been ballooning through the roof.  Both main parties in the US, with a majority of its politicians former lawyers, tend to take quite a hard line too.

2. The US’s Surprising Reform Edge

But almost alone among the world’s countries, allowing the citizens to fix aspects of this system problem one by one, the US also has an ace up its sleeve. 

At election time, reform measures can be put on the ballot, and the electorate gets to decide on each one directly, thus leapfrogging the political infighting.

On Tuesday, a record number of justice-related proposals will be on various ballots.  VOX has a very long article with numerous examples of what various voters will get to decide.

Anti mass incarceration measures are being put before over 100 million voters this year.

3. A Likely Positive Spread Effect

And finding such common ground should have a strong ripple effect across the political landscape as a whole.

When adversaries work together for the first time on a joint venture that serves both their needs, they discover new pathways for collaboration. Like neuroplasticity in the brain, when we learn to do something that yields satisfaction, we rewire how we think and behave.

This is already taking place in the area of criminal justice reform, especially with juvenile offenders.

After decades in which the “war on crime” was a wedge issue that roiled tensions about racial injustice and public safety, Republicans and Democrats have been cooperating on an integrative model of restorative justice that serves interests on both sides.

No one wants to see at-risk youth jailed for rash mistakes that crossed the line into criminal conduct. We may not agree on much, but few Americans want to watch children enter the notorious “pipeline to prison.”

And no one likes to spend tax dollars needlessly. Keeping a teenager out of incarceration is far cheaper than surrendering him to it. Prevention programs that connect teens with adult community mentors cost far less than prosecution and imprisonment. Because those youth make amends to their victims, personal responsibility is codified and enforced.

People on the left are pleased by the social progressivism; people on the right are happy about cutting government spending. Everyone gets something when we exercise our capacity for ingenuity and enterprise, which are, in the end, signature American traits.

Friday, October 26, 2018

More False Claims Of Plot To Frame “An Innocent”, Again Zero Motive Or Confirming Hard Fact

Posted by The Machine

We posted on the dishonesties of Making a Murderer 1 here.

Making a Murderer 2 has again brought out countless conspiracy nuts on Twitter who believe there was a dastardly plot to frame Steven Avery.

I’ve repeatedly asked them to provide some exculpatory evidence that proves he is innocent and some proof the police framed him.

So far none of them has provided any evidence to substantiate their claims. They’re all labouring under the misapprehension that the crime scene must conform to their particular expectations.

It reminds me of Amanda Knox’s creepy supporters who claim the lack of her DNA in Meredith’s room is proof of her innocence.

Monday, October 15, 2018

Humanity Of Italian Courts Suddenly The Subject Of Worldwide News Stories

Posted by Peter Quennell

Gilberto Baschiera (above) was a bank manager in Forni di Sopra (below), a small town between the Dolomites and the Austrian Alps.

He was recently labeled an Italian Robin Hood and widely admired in Italy and elsewhere for assisting impoverished customers to get loans - by topping up their accounts provisionally from larger accounts.

Why he did this is that the bank-loans system itself was changed for the worse under former Prime Berlusconi’s exceptionally harsh and ineffective austerity measures. 

Over seven years, his total “borrowings” came to exceed the equivalent of $1 million as not all of the loans were paid back.

So he was charged and there was a trial. Now we have just seen a new wave of reporting.

Gilberto’s court sentence is announced as two years SUSPENDED.

This is routine under Italian law - he did not “dodge” a prison term as some reporting had it - but not a typical outcome in any other legal system.

Monday, September 24, 2018

Knox’s Lamp: The Very Incriminating Evidence Found INSIDE Meredith’s Locked Room

Posted by James Raper

[Long post. Click here to go straight to Comments]

1. The Elephant In The Room Of Which No-one Speaks

Throughout the case it has frequently been claimed that there was no actual evidence of Knox’s presence in the “murder room” or the “scene of the crime” defined (wrongly) as Meredith’s bedroom alone.

However, this is to omit, among other things, the highly incriminating presence of the black desk lamp, which was found, without any fingerprints on it, behind the door. (There was only one print of Knox in the entire house; there were none in her own room or bathroom or kitchen except on one glass.)

The bald facts are that (1) Knox had such a lamp, (2) Meredith had two working lights of her own; (3) Knox grudgingly admitted ownership of the lamp at trial in 2009, (4) it was the only working source of illumination for her own room, and (5) when Meredith’s locked door was forced open, there it was, knocked over on the floor.

The omission of this incriminating evidence spreads surprisingly far, almost as if the highly regimented Knox-Mellas PR had ordered: “There must be no attention drawn to this.”.

The prosecution questioned Knox about it at trial (see Part 3 below) but the defenses had not one question in rebuttal or explanation of their own.

Knox makes no mention of it in her book. Preston makes no mention of it in his. Candace Dempsey makes no mention of it in hers. John Douglas (see the Machine’s telling posts below) makes no mention of it in either of his. Mark Waterbury makes no mention of it in his. Nina Burleigh makes no mention of it in hers. Bruce Fischer makes no mention of it in his. Raffaele Sollecito makes no mention of it in his.

Steve Moore avoids mentioning it in his stints on TV. Michael Heavey never makes mention of it in his talks. Greg Hampikian avoids mention when he is on TV. Anne Bremner has avoided talking about it as well.  Frank Sforza never mentioned it on his abandoned blog. There is a foolish mention on the malicious Ground Report site, the intent being somehow to frame Guede with it - but there were those two working lights in Meredith’s room, and there is no footprint evidence that he stepped next door.

What precisely was the lamp doing there? If Knox or Sollecito carried it there, what were they doing with it that Meredith’s lights were of no help?

At trial and at pre-trial questionings Knox always failed to explain (see trial testimony in Part 3 below). Nor could she explain how she failed to notice it missing from her own room.

Regrettably this purpose of the lamp was not a question ever adequately addressed by any of the judges when considering Knox’s complicity in the crime. Let us redress that oversight now.

TJMK has previously carried 16 other posts listed in Part 4 below with significant mentions of the incriminating lamp.

This is my eighth evidence post on TJMK; the seven prior posts are listed in Part 5 below. Other posts have been on the forensics, behaviours, and court outcomes. My ebook is linked-to in Part 6.

Red star indicates position of lamp

2. An Exercise In Deducing Amanda Knox’s Role

Knox denied knowing that her lamp had been in Meredith’s room and has never offered a plausible, indeed innocent, explanation for it being there. Accordingly we can rule out that Knox had lent it to Meredith at any time.

Other possible options are that Meredith or Rudy Guede had taken it from Knox’s bedroom, without her consent.

But if Meredith, why would she have done this? She had a wall light above her bed and her own desk lamp, neither of which were not working. Even if she had, why on the night of (and in the no more than two hours before) her murder? Only to leave it on the floor behind her door? There is no reason at all to believe that Meredith had borrowed the lamp just prior to her death and left it on her own floor.

Likewise, no plausible explanation can be offered for Guede taking the lamp.

If Knox was unaware that her lamp was there, could she really also have been unaware that it was not in her room? 

Two days after the discovery of the murder, and before her arrest, this is what Knox wrote in her e-mail, referring to the discovery of Filomena’s broken window after she and Sollecito had returned to the cottage ““

“Convinced that we had been robbed I went to Laura’s room and looked quickly in, but it was spotless like it hadn’t even been touched. This, too, I thought was odd. I then went into the part of the house that Meredith and I share and checked my room for things missing, which there weren’t.”

How could she possibly have missed it? Her own room was quite small and cramped, and the desk lamp should have been either on her desk or her table by the bed. It would have been a fairly prominent item and it’s absence would be impossible to miss even if, while checking, she was only paying minimal attention at the time.

Furthermore, according to her account she had been in and out of her room when visiting the cottage earlier that morning. Her room was sunless at that time of day.

She had undressed for a shower in her room but had to return for a towel, and then return to her room again to get dressed. Never noticed that her lamp was missing? She would say she had no reason to actually check on that occasion.

Knox was, of course, lying (there are many aspects of her e-mail which are simply not credible), but she really had to say that she checked her room because there had been a burglary, did she not?

She has to convey the impression that she herself believed, innocently, that there had been a genuine burglary and in doing so she was hoping to draw the investigators’ attention away from two important matters.

The first was that the burglary was staged. That is now a settled judicial fact in the case.

The second was that there had been a post murder manipulation of the crime scene by the removal of blood traces (ultimately though the 2015 Supreme Court did not accord this the status of a judicial fact, largely due to omission of facts and obfuscation on its part).

Furthermore the 2015 Supreme Court did not even mention Knox’s lamp at all.

Obviously its presence, in the position in which it was found, in Meredith’s room, plays into the notion of a post murder manipulation of the crime scene. If Meredith is a most unlikely agent for it being there, then how do we rate Knox’s and Guede’s agency?

Knox’s lamp and Meredith’s lamp were both on the floor, at either end of Meredith’s bed. This suggests that they were being used to check under the bed, as this area, with the wall light on, would have been in shadow at night.

It is difficult to imagine what incriminating item Guede would have been looking for and why it would have been of particular importance to him, to the extent that he ignored everything else.

We have to bear in mind that the room already had incriminating forensic traces of his presence there, and fairly obvious ones at that, which it never occurred to him to remove. We know that he had blood on the sole of his left shoe but the positioning of these prints did not indicate that he was looking under the bed, or had anything to do with the lamp.

It is admittedly speculation but Knox might have been looking for an earring on the floor. She’d recently had her ears pierced several times and from a photograph of her taken by the press outside the cottage after the crime we can see that one of her earrings was missing then.

The very presence of that lamp there has to be considered as potentially incriminating, and of Knox. It is a fact that has to be assessed and evaluated, and Knox would surely have appreciated that questions would be asked and that adverse inferences could be drawn.

That this is obvious is recognized even by her own supporters whose response when not ignoring the lamp is to take Knox’s e-mail at face value and claim that her lamp was a plant by the police.

Yes, really.

The lamp is part of the overwhelming circumstantial case against Knox and, I would argue, has had a particular resonance for her since, so much so that she has sought to ignore it always.

Why would she leave it in there? Behind a locked door?

Probably for the same reason that she did not get around to removing the trace of her own blood on the faucet of the sink in the small bathroom. Not thinking clearly because she was shattered, having been up all night and, probably, also as a result of having indulged in drugs and/or alcohol.

She might not have realized that the blood could be identified as hers, but the lamp would be a different matter, hard to explain.

In any event it was seemingly unwittingly left behind. An oversight which, at some point, must have occurred to her.

When might that have happened? It would have had to be when she was no longer in possession of Meredith’s keys, or, at least not in a position to retrieve these in time given the train of events set in motion next.

A perpetrator would not want to be found in possession of those keys. Still less, Sollecito. The knife could be cleaned, but the keys would be damning. 

On the face of it the keys could have been taken by Guede, but clearly the keys had remained in the possession of those who had arranged the staged burglary, and the post murder manipulation of the crime scene, and it is very improbable (as argued elsewhere) that Guede had any involvement with that.

Very probably the keys were tossed away into heavy undergrowth afterwards, or disposed of down some drain and then, some time later, Knox had the sudden realisation that this had left her and Sollecito with a problem. She could not simply retrieve the lamp and return it to her room without breaking down Meredith’s door.

Actually that could have been done, though not without some difficulty, and it would have fitted with a burglary and a violent assault on Meredith.

Though here the intelligent observer would have to assume from the circumstances, and no doubt Knox and Sollecito would have pondered on this, that Meredith had surprisingly been unable to thwart the lone intruder, had locked herself in to her room with her phones still with her, and would have undoubtedly called the emergency number for the police, while all this and the breaking down of her door, was going on.

However when exactly the oversight occurred to Knox needs to be considered. I personally believe that it was much later than most people would think. Certainly not just after the murder.

When was the plan to stage a burglary and remove the blood traces from the corridor put into operation?  Was it before or after they had listened to music for half an hour from 5.30 am and Knox had been seen by Quintavalle at his store at 7.45 am?

Given the nature of the headbanging rock music, may this have been a celebration of the stagings already accomplished, or were they nerving themselves to return to the cottage and put their plan into operation?

Personally I favour the notion that it was after listening to the music. When they finished the staging I have no idea, but it would still have been at a time in the morning when it was unlikely that anyone i.e Filomena would come calling. And they could still have cleared off to Gubbio for the day.

Perhaps it was always the case that Knox and Sollecito needed to be present when the murder was discovered, and in circumstances they could control in such a manner as to convince others of their complete lack of complicity in what had happened.

Maybe much of what then happened had already been pre-planned, including the story of Knox visiting the cottage to have a shower etc.

If one assumes this, and that it was then that Knox realises her mistake with the lamp, then what subsequently transpired makes a lot more sense.

A discovery process which had initially seemed manageable became, with her error, laden with danger. The lamp had to be retrieved but, with Sollecito’s assistance, this could still be achieved in the confusion of Filomena and her friends attending the cottage and breaking down the door themselves.

Should Filomena have perhaps baulked at the idea of doing any damage, then I suspect Knox and Sollecito would have pressed her to authorise this, if not actually gone right ahead to do this themselves - and see how innocent that would have then made them look! Win-win!

What would complicate matters was if the police were also there, and so the possibility of anyone alerting the police had to be delayed.

Now let us look at the phone records with the above in mind.

From 12.07 until 12.35 am on the morning of the discovery of the murder, Knox and Filomena exchanged telephone calls, whereby Knox slowly ramped up the worry on Filomena’s part as to what was going on and Meredith’s safety.

As a consequence of the first call, by Knox, made from Sollecito’s bedsit, Filomena asked her to check certain things out e.g ring Meredith’s phones and keep her informed, but otherwise had not heard enough to indicate that she herself needed to return to the cottage, or that the police needed to be involved.

Incidentally, Knox had misled Filomena when asked by her whether she had yet tried calling Meredith by phone. Had Knox told Filomena the truth, that she had just tried Meredith’s english phone (for 16 seconds) Filomena would undoubtedly have been more than worried given that would have been after midday, when surely Meredith would have been up and about.

Was that the point of the omission, because Knox did not require Filomena to be that concerned yet? Time had yet to pass for Knox and Sollecito to compose themselves and for them to engage in the panic and search ritual which they were ready to describe. 

However Filomena remained concerned and called Knox twice more until Knox answered her from the cottage at 12.35 to inform her that her bedroom window had been broken and her room had been trashed.

Knox would have been fully aware what the effect would have been of the latter call. Filomena was adamant. Knox had to call the police. More importantly, for Knox, Filomena would now definitely be returning to the cottage, and quickly. Who would get there first? Filomena or the police? The answer, for Knox, would not be in doubt.

At 12.47 whilst awaiting the arrival of Filomena, Knox called her mother.

The circumstances of that call are extremely puzzling. In retrospect I think the call was simply to fill in time and to keep her nerves steady.

As to that call (4.47 am Seattle time, while Edda and Chris were still asleep, and prior to the discovery of Meredith”˜s body) Knox not only did not mention that in her e-mail but in taped conversation with her mother and in her trial testimony she steadfastly declined to recall that it had occurred.

Ostensibly the call would have been, of course, to report the break in. So what would be the problem with that? Indeed, Edda’s frustration with her daughter was eloquently expressed in her response during the taped conversation - “But nothing had happened yet!”  Knox clearly did not want to discuss her motive for the call, neither then nor later, nor as to what had transpired in conversation with her mother (and stepfather) before the discovery of Meredith’s body.

Not only was the timing of the 12.47 call inconvenient to her mother but I found it interesting to note from Knox’s phone records (covering 2nd Oct - 3rd November) that mother and daughter do not appear to have called or texted each other once by phone up until that 12.47 call.

It would appear then that in so far as they remained in direct communication with each other for that period it must have been by e-mail or Skype. Indeed Knox has referred to such communication being via internet café. One can therefore imagine that her mother was very surprised to receive that call.

It is also very difficult to accept that Knox could not recall a phone call she was not in the habit of making.

Until Knox published her book the only information that was available about the 12.47 call (apart from the phone log which showed that it lasted 88 seconds) came from her mother (who reported that her daughter was concerned about the break in) and her stepfather Chris Mellas.

Mellas says that he interrupted the conversation between mother and daughter to tell Amanda to get out of the cottage. In her book Knox tells us (her memory now having returned) that he yelled at her but that she was “spooked” enough without that.

But what had really happened to spook her? It was just a burglary after all, even if the matter of Meredith’s whereabouts was as yet unresolved. None of her own possessions had been stolen. Furthermore Filomena was on her way to take charge.

The call she made to her mother after the discovery of the murder (the one she remembered) was perfectly understandable, the prior call, without further context, less so. 

Readers will already know where I am coming from, but I believe that it was whilst walking back to the cottage with Sollecito that Knox realised her mistake with the lamp. However, it could have been earlier than that.

In any event this realisation would have set the cat amongst the pigeons for her. So, it was both a comfort and a rehearsal call, not simply because there had been a burglary, but because she knew a hazardous set of events was about to unfold on Romanelli’s arrival at the cottage. The fact that her mother and stepfather already had the jitters was not a good omen.

Still, retrieving the lamp and returning it to her own room remained feasible, provided the police were not there. However Romanelli had yet to arrive and time was running out.

Both Knox and Sollecito knew that any further delay in calling the police would look suspicious. Finally they did so, at 12.51, though it is probable that the postal police had unexpectedly arrived before then.

In my book I have argued that the likely time of arrival of the postal police was probably about 12.48-9. Indeed that may have been why Knox brought her call to her mother to an end.  (“Looks as if someone is coming. Gotta go now.”) 

I wonder if that is another reason why Knox would not want to remember the call, particularly during the taped conversation with her mother in the prison. She would not want to prompt her mother to that recollection. That wouldn’t fit with the claim, as related to the postal police, that they had already called the Carabinieri.

In any event, the opportunity to retrieve the lamp had been lost.

I have always thought that the oddities in Knox’s own account of events reveal and explain much even if, ostensibly, she appears to be giving an innocent account of everything. In her e-mail she refers to her panic and specifically links this to concern over Meredith’s whereabouts and safety.

However the panic suddenly subsided, and her concern was significantly lacking, non-existent actually, when the postal police made their surprise entrance before the arrival of Filomena and her friends. We can also see why she says, before that, that Sollecito would want, and allegedly attempt, to break Meredith’s door open.

Had I been in Knox’s shoes, and with a mutual alibi with Sollecito, I too would have thought the discovery of the murder of “my best friend” would have been manageable, but for that damned lamp. There would be questions to be answered, of course, but she had already thought all that through, hadn’t she?

As it happened, things did not turn out too bad for her in the immediate aftermath.

She was not, she thought, under immediate suspicion as she must have feared she would be. Seemingly nobody had twigged to the lamp business, nor to the staged burglary.

She must have thought the police immensely stupid for her to have got away with that, as she thought she had. She was also the centre of attention and coping reasonably well, but for that dicey moment when she was shown the drawer of knives in the kitchen.

Her confidence had soared sufficiently for her to even claim that she had checked her room and had found nothing missing!

But wait! What were those “hard facts” she claims the police had mentioned later during her fourth (5 Nov) pre-arrest interview?

Let me see. Hmm. Suspicions, certainly. Her alibi gone deep south. The locked door, the lamp, the quilt, the staged burglary? An e-mail in which she is just a bit too full of herself and the content of which, in places, was just a bit too unreal, daffy and lah-di-dah, to be true? The strange behaviour at the police station? Phone records? God, could they have phone records?

No wonder she didn’t ask the police to elaborate.

3. Amanda Knox Questioned On The Lamp At Trial

Giuliano Mignini:  Okay. Okay. Listen, another question. The lamp that was found in Meredith’s room, a black lamp with a red button, that was found in Meredith’s room, at the foot of the bed. Was it yours?
Amanda Knox:  I did have a lamp with a red button in my room, yes.
GM:  So the lamp was yours.
AK:  I suppose it was.
GM:  Was it missing from your room?
AK:  You know, I didn’t look.
GM:  Did Meredith have a lamp like that in her room?
AK:  I don’t know…

GM:  Now, another question. You told us before, this story about the door, about knocking down the door, that Raffaele tried to break down the door. You said that you tried to explain that sometimes she did have her door locked, you told us about this point. Now, I want to ask you this question: Raffaele didn’t by any chance try to break down the door to get back the lamp we talked about?
AK:  [perfectly calm reasonable voice] No, we didn’t know the lamp was in there.
GM:  You didn’t know that your lamp was in there?
AK:  In the sense that the lamp that was supposed to be in my room, I hadn’t even noticed it was missing. I tried—
GM:  You didn’t see that it was missing?
AK:  No, I didn’t see that it was missing.

Francesco Maresca:  In your room in via della Pergola, was there a central light?
Amanda Knox:  There was one but it didn’t work, so I used the little bedside lamp.
FM:  The lamp.
AK:  The little lamp, yes.
FM:  And you previously stated that you didn’t look for the lamp either; you only looked for your computer when you went into your room. You didn’t look for your money, you didn’t look for your lamp.
AK:  So, I saw the window only the second time that I entered the house. The first time I went into the house I didn’t even think of looking to see if anything was missing, because I saw going into the living room, it really looked like someone had just gone out of the house, everything was in order, just as I had left it. But the second time, I didn’t even think of looking for the lamp: the computer was the important thing for me. All my documents were in it.
FM:  But the first time, when you took your shower and then you returned to your room, first you undressed and then you dressed, all this, you did it without any light?
AK:  It was the middle of the morning, there was already light.
FM:  Did you open your shutters or were they already open?
AK:  I don’t remember.
FM:  To get to your room, to get to the window, you walked in the dark?
AK:  But it wasn’t dark in my room. Often—
FM:  I don’t know, I wasn’t there.
AK:  All right. Usually I only turned on that little lamp at night. Really at night, or in the evening, when I wanted to…So I didn’t even think of turning it on. It really wasn’t dark in my room when I went in.
GCM:  It wasn’t dark, but where was the light coming from? Natural light?
AK:  Natural.

4. Prior Posts With Significant Mention Of The Lamp

1. Click for Post:  Trial: Highlights Of The Testimony On 6 February And 7 February

2. Click for Post:  How The Media Should Approach The Case If Justice Is To Be Done And SEEN To Be Done

3. Click for Post:  Open Questions: An Experienced Trial Lawyer Recommends How To Zero In On the Truth

4. Click for Post:  Fifteenth Appeal Session: Prosecutor Manuela Comodi Starkly Explains All The Forensic Evidence

5. Click for Post:  How The Clean-Up And The Locked Door Contribute To The Very Strong Case For Guilt

6. Click for Post:  Amanda Knox Risks Penalties For Felony Claims No Different From What Already Cost Her 3 Years

7. Click for Post:  Given The Abundant Facts, What Scenario Is The Nencini Court Considering? Probably Not Unlike This

8. Click for Post:  Appeal Session #4: Today Lead Prosecutor Alessandro Crini Summarises The Prosecution’s Case

9. Click for Post:  Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz And Philly Lawyer Ted Simon Both Claim The Devil’s In The Details

10. Click for Post:  Knox & Sollecito Actions In The Week Prior To Arrest: An Incriminating Behavior Pattern For Sure

11. Click for Post:  Judge Nencini Issues Harsh Warning To Tell The Truth - So Amanda Knox Does The Precise Opposite

12. Click for Post:  Fifty Of The Most Common Myths Still Promoted Without Restraint By The Knox PR Campaign

13. Click for Post:  From David Marriott’s Parrot: Latest Talking Points To Be Beamed At The Unbelieving

14. Click for Post:  Questons For Knox: Adding A Dozen More To The Several Hundred Knox So Far Avoided

15. Click for Post:  A Critique In Five Parts Of The Fifth Chambers Motivation Report By Judges Marasca And Bruno #5

16. Click for Post:  Revenge Of The Knox, The Smear-All Book #12: Finally, We Nail Knox’s Self-Serving 2015 Afterword

5. My Prior TJMK Posts On The Physical Evidence

1. Click for Post:  Powerpoints #17: Why The Totality of Evidence Suggests Knox And Sollecito Are Guilty Just As Charged

2. Click for Post:  Despite Disinformation From Apologists And Even Supreme Court, Law & Science Support Damning DNA

3. Click for Post:  Multiple Attackers and the Compatibility of the Double DNA Knife (Exhibit 36)

4. Click for Post:  The Suspicious Behaviour And Evidence Contradicting the Mutual Alibis Of RS And AK

5. Click for Post:  Problems With Fred Davies #2: His Claims On Knives, Wounds And Stains Also Highly Mislead

6. Click for Post:  How The Clean-Up And The Locked Door Contribute To The Very Strong Case For Guilt

7. Click for Post:  Considering The Sad And Sensitive But Also Crucial Subject Of Meredith’s Time Of Death

6. My Book Of Which This Is A Part

Amazon US:  Justice on Trial: The Final Outcome - Evidence and Analysis in the Meredith Kercher Murder Case

Thursday, August 02, 2018

The DNA Hoax: Ways To Rebut The Drive-By Critics Of The Case On The DNA Dimension

Posted by The Machine

1. Post Overview

There were two starkly contrasting takes on the DNA evidence in Italy. The zombie hoax version still somewhat persists in the US and UK. 

In fact, Dr Stefanoni’s team in 2007-2008 and the Carabinieri labs in 2013 did absolutely impeccable work - with defense observers always looking on, and never, ever complaining or intervening.

The misrepresenting of the DNA evidence in 2011 by the illegal “independent” consultancy of Conti & Vecchiotti was shot down in all points in this court presentation which, amazingly, was seemingly unknown to the 2015 Supreme Court.

But too many people do not know that Judge Chieffi from the Supreme Court said there was no evidence of contamination in his report. Or that Dr Biondo carried out a peer review of Dr Stefanoni’s forensic investigation.  Or that a world-renowned DNA expert said the DNA evidence against Sollecito was “very strong”.

For lawyers and others here seeking to understand the real case at courtroom depth an overview of all our posts is now being assembled in our little factory.  I do recommend these posts as prior reading.

Click for Post:  The Hundreds Of DNA Samples Taken And Analyses Done, Shown In Table Form, by Olleosnep

Click for Post:  Netflixhoax 13: Omitted - How The DNA Processes And Evidence Points Were Deliberately Misrepresented, by KrissyG

Click for Post:  Despite Disinformation From Apologists And Even Supreme Court, Law & Science Support Damning DNA, by James Raper

2. Effective Points Worth Hammering

1. Is LCN DNA evidence fit for purpose and scientifically robust?

Amanda Knox’s supporters have lambasted the DNA evidence against Knox and Sollecito because included LCN DNA evidence, but a number of G7 countries have accept LCN DNA evidence as valid, including America, for years.

So is it robust? In a word: yes. LCN DNA evidence was first used by the Forensic Science Service in England in 1999. Professor Brian Caddy carried out an independent review of LCN DNA evidence in 2008 and concluded it was fit for purpose and scientifically robust.

“I am satisfied low template DNA is fit for purpose within the criminal justice system.

“I found that the technique, as developed by all the forensic suppliers, is scientifically robust and appropriate for use in police investigations.”

Andrew Rennison, the Forensic Science Regulator, said: “I’m satisfied the science is safe and fit for purpose, but there is work to be done around collection and interpretation.”

The Crown Prosecution Service has listed the countries where LCN DNA evidence has been used as evidence.

“LCN methods have been used as evidence in a number of countries, ie; United States (New York), New Zealand, Holland, Italy, Germany, Croatia, Austria and Switzerland.”

2. Is there any evidence the bra clasp ane knife were contaminated?

No. Judge Chieffi - who is an equal counterpart of Judge Marasca - pointed out in his Supreme Court report that the claim of contamination is an unproven hypothesis and there is no evidence of contamination:

“The unproven hypothesis of contamination was taken as an axiom, once again despite the available information, to nullify the probative value of the data collected by the consultants as per article 360 of the Criminal Procedure Code, although the data acquired did not support this conclusion.” (Judge Chieffi’s Supreme Court report, page 94).

3. Was Dr Stefanoni’s forensic investigation peer-reviewed?

Yes. Dr. Renato Biondo, the head of the DNA Unit of the Scientific Police, reviewed Dr. Stefanoni’s investigation and the forensic findings in 2008. He confirmed that all the forensic findings were accurate and reliable.

He also praised the work of Dr. Stefanoni and her team: “We are confirming the reliability of the information collected from the scene of the crime and at the same time, the professionalism and excellence of our work.”

4. Was Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA on Meredith’s bra clasp?

Yes. This wasn’t disputed by any forensic scientist in court. Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA was identified by two separate DNA tests.

“Both by the quantity of DNA analyzed and by the fact of having performed the analysis at 17 loci with unambiguous results, not to mention the fact that the results of the analysis were confirmed by the attribution of the Y haplotype to the defendant, it is possible to say that it has been judicially ascertained that Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA was present on the exhibit; an exhibit that was therefore handled by the defendant on the night of the murder.” (The Nencini report, page 267).

David Balding, a professor of Statistical Genetics at University College London, analysed the DNA evidence against Sollecito and concluded that the evidence was “strong”

“”¦because Sollecito is fully represented in the stain at 15 loci (we still only use 10 in the UK, so 15 is a lot), the evidence against him is strong”¦”

In Andrea Vogt’s excellent BBC documentary, he said the bra clasp evidence against Sollecito was “very strong’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erla7Ley4Tw&t=1892s

DNA expert Luciano Garofano said the result of the DNA test on the bra clasp was “perfect”. He is a former Caribinieri General and has more than 32 years of forensic experience

5. Could the bra clasp have been contaminated in the laboratory?

Dr Stefanoni last handled Sollecito’s DNA 12 days before she analysed the bra clasp. This means that contamination couldn’t have occurred in the laboratory.

Judge Chieffi noted that Conti and Vecchiotti had excluded contamination in the laboratory.

“Laboratory contamination was also excluded by these experts [Conti and Vecchiotti].” (Judge Chieffi’s Supreme Court report, page 92).

Judge Chieffi also noted in his report that the negative controls to exclude laboratory contamination had been carried out:

“”¦since all the negative controls to exclude it [contamination] had been done by Dr Stefanoni”¦” (Judge Chieffi’s Supreme Court report, page 93).

When the defence experts observed the DNA tests being carried at Dr Stefanoni’s laboratory in Rome, they had no objections::

“”¦the probative facts revealed by the technical consultant [Stefanoni] were based on investigative activities that were adequately documented: sampling activity performed under the very eyes of the consultants of the parties, who raised no objection”¦” (Judge Chieffi’s Supreme Court report, page 93).

6. Could the bra clasp have been contaminated in the cottage?

Alberto Intini, the head of the Italian police forensic science unit, excluded environmental contamination at the Massei trial because “DNA doesn’t fly.”

Professor Francesca Torricelli testified that it was unlikely the clasp was contaminated because there was a significant amount of Sollecito’s DNA on it

Professor Novelli also ruled out environmental contamination. He pointed out in court there’s more likelihood of meteorite striking the courtroom in Perugia than there is of the bra clasp being contaminated by dust at the cottage.

“The hook contaminated by dust? It’s more likely for a meteorite to fall and bring this court down to the ground.”

He also ruled out contamination in the laboratory.

“Prof. Novelli said that the origin or vehicle of any contamination must be demonstrated: he added that at the Scientific Police laboratory he had seen the 255 samples [68] extracted, had analysed all the profiles, and had not found any evidence of contamination; he ruled out in an absolutely convincing manner that a contamination agent could be present intermittently, or that DNA could remain suspended, and later fall down in a specific place.” (Judge Chieffi’s Supreme Court report, page 94).

7. Could a forensic investigator have contaminated the bra clasp?

Highly unlikely. As far as I’m aware, there is still not one peer-reviewed scientific study published in a prestigious journal demonstrating tertiary transfer of touch DNA.

Why should a judge or juror favor a lower probability transfer scenario - tertiary transfer via sloppy forensic technicians - over a higher probability transfer scenario - primary transfer in the course of murder and/or staging - given the fact Sollecito also gave multiple false alibis and lied repeatedly to the police, the bloody footprint matched the precise characteristics of his foot, one of the bare bloody footprints revealed by Luminol matched his foot and Meredith’s DNA was found on the blade of his kitchen knife?

8. How did Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA get onto Meredith’s bra clasp?

Judge Chieffi pointed out that Sollecito’s DNA was never found alone at the cottage. The only trace of his DNA was mixed with Knox’s DNA on the cigarette butt in the kitchen. This means the mixed DNA sample could not have been the source of the DNA on the clasp because Knox’s DNA would also have been found on it.

Sollecito’s DNA was found on the exact part of Meredith’s bra clasp that had been bent out of shape during the attack on her. It is far more plausible that his DNA ended up on the deformed clasp because he applied enough pressure to bend it out of shape than to believe his DNA was carried by a gust of air or floated on a speck of dust and landed on it by some incredible coincidence.

9. Were there several other male DNA profiles on Meredith’s bra clasp?

Professor Balding and Luciano Garofalo both said there was the DNA profile of one unknown male on Meredith’s bra clasp.

“...in some cases we have peaks that correspond to a fourth person.” (Professor Balding).

“The fourth person is not Guede, it seems. This mystery fourth person hasn’t been mentioned much.” (Luciano Garofano, Darkness Descending).

There wasn’t a full DNA profile for this unknown male. Professor Balding didn’t attach any importance to it and explained these extra peaks are routine:

“The extra peaks are all low, so the extra individuals contributed very little DNA.  That kind of extraneous DNA is routine in low-template work: our environment is covered with DNA from breath and touch, including a lot of fragmentary DNA from degraded cells that can show up in low-template analyses.  There is virtually no crime sample that doesn’t have some environmental DNA on it, from individuals not directly involved in the crime.”

10. Was Meredith Kercher’s DNA on the blade of Raffaele Sollecito’s kitchen knife?

Yes. Undoubtedly. A number of forensic experts - Dr Stefanoni, Dr Biondo, Professor Novelli, Professor Torricelli, Luciano Garofano, Elizabeth Johnson, Greg Hampikian and Bruce Budowle - have all confirmed that sample 36-b, which was extracted from the blade of the knife, was Meredith Kercher’s DNA.

“In his report submitted on 6 September 2011 to the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Perugia, Prof. Giuseppe Novelli, consultant of the Prosecutor, wrote the following observations on this point: “[...] the consultant [Stefanoni] also did a statistical calculation with the purpose of determining the probability that the profile could belong to someone other than the victim. The calculation of the Random Match Probability came to 1 chance in 300 million billion. This value computed in this manner makes it possible to attribute the analyzed trace with absolute certainty to exactly one person, which the consultant holds to be the victim Meredith Kercher.” (Page 11 of the above-cited report) (The Nencini report, page 230).

11. Could the knife have been contaminated?

Dr Stefanoni analysed the traces on the knife six days after last handling Meredith’s DNA. This means laboratory contamination can be ruled out.

As I’ve already pointed out, Conti and Vecchiotti ruled out contamination in the laboratory.

Judge Micheli ruled out contamination during the collection phase because the knife was sequestered from Sollecito’s apartment on Corso Garibaldi by a different police team to the one that collected evidence from the cottage on Via della Pergola on the same day.

12. Could Meredith’s DNA got onto the blade of Sollecito’s kitchen knife by accident?

Sollecito claimed in his prison diary that he had accidentally pricked Meredith’s hand whilst cooking:

“The fact there is Meredith’s DNA on the kitchen knife is because once when we were all cooking together I accidentally pricked her hand. I apologised immediately and she said it was not a problem.”

Meredith had never been to Sollecito’s apartment. He later admitted that the above account isn’t true.

13. Didn’t new tests on the knife prove Meredith Kercher’s DNA wasn’t on the blade?

A further DNA sample 36-b was tested by the Carabinieri RIS DNA experts Major Berti and Captain Barni in 2013. The sample was attributed to Amanda Knox. A different test on a different DNA sample doesn’t invalidate the test result of sample 36-b.

14. Did Dr. Stefanoni and the forensic technicians break international protocols?

No. There is no universally accepted set of international standards for the collection and testing of DNA evidence. DNA protocols vary from country to country, and in America they vary from state to state. For example, New York state accepts LCN DNA tests in criminal trials.

The Italian Scientific Police follow the guidelines of the ENFSI - the European Network Forensic Science Institutes. Dr. Stefanoni observed that they followed these specific guidelines whereas Conti and Vecchiotti basically picked and mixed a random selection of international opinions:

“We followed the guidelines of the ENFSI, theirs is just a collage of different international opinions”.

Conti and Vecchiotti cited obscure American publications such as the Missouri State Highway Patrol Handbook and the Wisconsin Crime Laboratory Physical Evidence Handbook, not international protocols. The Scientific Police are under no obligation to follow the DNA protocols of the Missouri State Highway Patrol or the Wisconsin Crime Laboratory.