Headsup: To those many lawyers amazed that Knox did not get on the witness stand to head off a certain re-conviction: the best guess among Italian lawyers is that Knox's own lawyers feared ANOTHER calunnia charge if she repeated the crackpot and highly disprovable claims that she was tortured. The tough calunnia law is primarily a pushback measure against mafia meddling which is widely suspected in this case.

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.

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Two More Shockers The Pro-Knox Trashers Of Italian Justice Prefer That You Don’t Know

Posted by Peter Quennell

[New on-the-mark YouTube replaces image of women prisoners]

Shocker One: Too Many Women

Worldwide, female inmates have increased 600% in thirty years. Who leads that growth? The United States.

As for Italy there’s hardly been any growth at all (even despite this) and the total of female inmates is only HALF the US female rate.

Under pressure, now that the facts are out, the US government is scrapping plans to build even more female prisons. Nevertheless

Although men comprise over 90% of inmates, and commit about 80% of violent crime, the United States has a much higher percentage of incarcerated women in jail than other developed countries.

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines jail as follows:

“A place of confinement for persons held in lawful custody; specifically :such a place under the jurisdiction of a local government (such as a county) for the confinement of persons awaiting trial or those convicted of minor crimes.”

There are far too many women in jail (not convicted of any crime) waiting for trial””because they cannot afford bail. Studies have indicated that women in jail had an approximate annual median income of $11,000. Minority women had an even lower annual median income.

With such a low income, how could a woman afford even a $10,000 bail bond. Although a bail bondsman would accept 5-10% of the ordered $10,000 bail, most low income women do not have $500””$1,000. The majority of the jailed women are the only parent contributing the only financial support for their children.

Because many of the jailed women are the primary caretakers of their children, they are not usually considered flight risks.

The painful conclusion”“incarcerated women (not convicted) are held in jail waiting for their court date, because they are poor. This shameful condition can be easily cured by judges acting humanely, when imposing bail.

The plight of poor women in jail, waiting for trial, is another example of our broken system of justice.

Shocker Two: Too Many Men

Justice systems of other countries take Italy’s humane pioneering very seriously.

Not least because the rate of released Italian inmates rearrested, known as recidivism, is among the world’s very least.

In part because of treatment for mental health issues and the serious in-demand skills training in Italian prisons for when they emerge.

At the opposite end of the scale? Yes, again. The United States.

Though you never ever hear this from the American trashers of Italian justice, the US is now at the very opposite end of this scale.

Overall, 68 percent of released state prisoners were arrested within three years, 79 percent within six years and 83 percent within nine years.  The 401,288 released state prisoners were arrested an estimated 2 million times during the nine years after their release, an average of five arrests per released prisoner.

On an annual basis, 44 percent of prisoners were arrested during the first year after release, 34 percent were arrested during the third year and 24 percent were arrested during the ninth year.  Five percent of prisoners were arrested during the first year after release and were not arrested again during the 9-year follow-up period.

All the proposed solutions would in effect move the US closer to Italy.

One is to simply stop putting so many people in prison in the first place. We have noted a few times that over 200,000 are wrongly there through forced plea-bargains right now.

Not much action on that. The money-grubbing Innocence Project turns a blind eye to that.

The one large initiative in the country is to decriminalize drugs. Proposition 64, which was endorsed by 56 percent of California voters 20 months ago, made marijuana legal.

And drug-related arrests are through the floor. There has been a slight uptick in some crimes but no sign the overall mood is hardening.

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

The Single-Attacker/Lone-Wolf Hoax: How It Is Annihilated By The Forensic Evidence

Posted by Cardiol MD

Judge Micheli in 2008 first ruled impossible Guede did crime alone

1. Context Of This Post

In previous posts I noted my extensive court experience with forensic testimony. I have American doctorates in medicine and law.

Also that the remorseless waves of forensic evidence above all, in days of harrowing closed-door presentations of expert testimony in 2009, (1) ended the defenses’ feeble bids to frame Guede as a lone wolf, (2) caused Sollecito and Knox to react with evident stress in front of a closely-watching jury, and (3) above all caused unanimous verdicts of guilty to murder with a sex crime component.

[Massei Report] Within the crime of murder, carried out in the course of the sexual assault which Meredith Kercher was subjected to according to what has been presented, the crime of sexual assault is assimilated as a special aggravating circumstance of the former [i.e. of the murder].

2. Availability Of Forensic Detail

The forensic evidence published by the courts was in Italian, distributed between several documents, and reported-on by less than 5 percent of the non-Italian media. The BBC, Associated Press, Reuters, London Times and New York Times, made zero mention of it.

Meredith’s autopsy was performed by Dr. Luca Lalli. Though the court heard them described at length, his detailed findings are not included in Massei’s report, and they still await their full translation into English. The Massei report includes only a limited paraphrase of Lalli’s findings.

Accordingly, to fully comprehend the totality of it in English requires the reading of: (1) the early 2009 Micheli Report; (2) the early 2010 Massei Report; (3) the early 2011 Giordano report; and (4) parts of “Darkness Descending” by Russell, Johnson, and Garofano (see more below).

Here now is a safe bet for you. Not a single pathologist anywhere who is on top of all of this evidence will ever conclude that Meredith was not the victim of a pack attack.

Contrary to the incessant bait & switch of the toxic Knox PR in the US (“but the DNA…”) which had zero effect on any jury in Italy, not even one court, including the annulled 2011 appeal and the final appeal to the 2015 Supreme Court, ever concluded to the contrary. It all still stands.

Even the Knox & Sollecito defenses stopped denying it after 2009. No TV report or article or book has ever attempted to prove that Guede or anyone else was a lone-wolf killer in light of this vast amount of material.

3. The Final Fatal Sequence

In my opinion the most decisive fact excluding the single attacker theory is all the hard proof that 2 different knives were unquestionably used to torture and murder Meredith on the night. 

There were 2 major penetrating knife-wounds into Meredith’s neck; one entering on the left-side, and one entering on the right-side, which was made by a pocket-knife of the size Sollecito customarily carried.

The latter wound could not have been made by whatever knife entered on the left-side as the size discrepancy was huge. Two knives had to have been used.

For enigmatic reasons, Massei chose to disagree with the reconstruction proposed by the prosecution’s expert witnesses, which depicted Meredith on her knees facing the floor: Massei concluded that Meredith was in a standing position facing her attackers:

Massei Page 372-373: considering the neck wounds sustained, it must be believed that Meredith remained in the same position, in a standing position, while continuously exposing her neck to the action of the person striking her now on the right and now on the left. Such a situation seems inexplicable if one does not accept the presence of more than one attacker who, holding the girl, strongly restrained her movements and struck her on the right and on the left because of the position of each of the attackers with respect to her, by which it was easier to strike her from that side.

4. Certainties re Final Fatal Sequence:

Here I reiterate the relevant certainties which I first posted in Those Pesky Certainties Cassation’s Fifth Chamber May Or May Not Convincingly Contend With #3 on Wednesday, May 20, 2015.

Meredith’s torture & murder, perpetrated by 3 people, took place in her room at Number 7, Via della Pergola in Perugia, Umbria, Italy on the night of November 1-2, 2007. This room measured eleven by nine and a half feet, contained a single bed, a bedside table, and a cupboard. The space was small but enough for Meredith and three perpetrators.

Certainty One re Final Fatal Sequence

In “Darkness Descending - the Murder of Meredith Kercher”  Paul Russell (Author), Graham Johnson (Author), and Luciano Garofano (Author) give clearer, more detailed descriptions of Dr. Lalli’s findings than Massei does.

On pages 72-74 of DD it emerges that the cut (Stab A) made by a large knife in Meredith’s neck was on the left-side, ran obliquely from left-to-right, almost parallel to her jaw, and slightly upwards.

Certainty Two re Final Fatal Sequence

DD does state that the knife entered 8cm vertically below her left ear, 1.5cm horizontally towards the front of her neck, but does not specify the cut’s length.

Certainty Three re Final Fatal Sequence

A large knife created a gaping wound, visible only through the opened-skin of the left side, continuing its travel under the skin, traveling across the mid-line plane, towards the right-side, exposing the oral cavity, fatty tissues and throat glands. Important jaw muscles were also severed.

Certainty Four re Final Fatal Sequence

As DD states, there was another stab wound (Stab B) on the right-hand side of Meredith’s neck, 1.5 cm long, penetrating 4 cm subcutaneously.

Certainty Five re Final Fatal Sequence

Stab B was made by a knife smaller than the above large knife.

Certainty Six re Final Fatal Sequence

The wound was shallow, did not create a gaping wound, did not cut important subcutaneous structures, but did create a route to the exterior through which blood from Stab A, then created by the large knife on Meredith’s left side, could also exit to Meredith’s right side.

Certainty Seven re Final Fatal Sequence

The large knife had damaged no significant vessels of the left side.

Certainty Eight re Final Fatal Sequence

Blood also flooded the subcutaneous tissues around the breech in the right-hand side of Meredith’s airway caused by the knife-stab on the left-side of her neck.

Certainty Nine re Final Fatal Sequence

This resulted in Meredith’s inhalation of her own blood.

Certainty Ten re Final Fatal Sequence

Meredith stops screaming, but now her blood seems to be everywhere, including over her attackers, and they quickly abandon her, already evading the accountability they are fully aware is theirs.

Certainty Eleven re Final Fatal Sequence

As DD comments, during Meredith’s autopsy, surprise was expressed that the Jugular Veins and Carotid Arteries (of both right and left sides) were intact.

Exzperts who read about this murder concluded from this that the killers must have known about the major blood vessels (MBVs), but not about branches-of-Carotid-branches such as little RSTA.

5. Beyond Any Reasonable Doubts re Final Fatal Sequence:

Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt One re Final Fatal Sequence

Accepting Massei’s conclusion, Knox and Sollecito were standing-up and facing Meredith in Meredith’s room. Knox, Sollecito and/or Guede, were participating in the restraining of Meredith.

Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt Two re Final Fatal Sequence

Sollecito (or possibly Guede) was holding the smaller Knife, probably in his right hand. This smaller knife made Stab B.

Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt Three re Final Fatal Sequence

Stab B preceded Stab A, and caused Meredith’s scream.

When Meredith screams Knox plunges Knife36 into Meredith’s neck in the above long-axis direction, from left to right, transecting Meredith’s Hyoid bone, first opening Meredith’s airway to the atmosphere, then transecting Meredith’s Right Superior Thyroid Artery.

Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt Four re Final Fatal Sequence

Knox was holding Knife36, probably in Knox’s right hand, against the left side of Meredith’s neck with Knife36’s point directed slightly upwards toward the right side of Meredith’s neck, the blade-label facing towards Knox, the palm of Knox’s right hand also facing towards Knox and the long-axis of Knife36 angled a few degrees above horizontal.

Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt Five re Final Fatal Sequence

When Meredith screams Knox plunges Knife36 into Meredith’s neck in the above long-axis direction, from left to right, transecting Meredith’s Hyoid bone, first opening Meredith’s airway to the atmosphere, then transecting Meredith’s Right Superior Thyroid Artery.

Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt Six re Final Fatal Sequence

A thin stream of bright-red blood spurted from this artery to its exterior environment, probably through the cuts made in her skin to the outside by both knives.

(Consistent with bleeding from both cuts, Follain, in his book “A Death In Italy” states that Guede saw that blood was coming out of the left side of Meredith’s neck. Follain also states that Francesco Camana of the Rome forensic police, in Camana’s written report, notes that spurts of blood in the middle of Meredith’s chest made her sweatshirt more bloody on the right side than on the left side)

Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt Seven re Final Fatal Sequence

The large knife was Knife-36, which had been brought to the murder room from Sollecito’s kitchen.

Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt Eight re Final Fatal Sequence

The 3 murderers were Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito, & Ruede Guede.

6. Other Essential Facts Corroborating Roles of AK & RS

1. Amanda Knox admitted she was present at the place and time of Meredith’s murder.

2. Amanda Knox’s DNA was found on the top of the handle of Knife-36

3. Meredith Kercher’s DNA was found on the blade of Knife-36.

4. Amanda Knox admitted that Meredith had never been in Sollecito’s apartment.

5. A second sample of Knox’s DNA was also found on Knife-36, where the blade goes into the handle. This second sample was an LCN sample of mixed DNA, and was statistically determined to be Knox’s DNA. (RIS Berti & Barni 2013 report)

6. A DNA mixture compatible with Knox’s and Sollecito’s DNA was found on another stained pocket knife that Sollecito had on him.

7. Sollecito’s DNA was found on Meredith’s bra clasp. 

8. Some 7 samples yielded DNA mixtures compatible with Ms. Kercher’s DNA mixed with either Knox’s DNA, Sollecito’s DNA or Guede’s DNA.

9. A DNA mixture compatible with Ms. Kercher’s DNA and Guede’s DNA was found on Ms. Kercher’s purse near the zipper.

10. A DNA mixture compatible with Ms. Kercher’s DNA and Knox’s DNA was found in three blood traces in the bathroom: (1) on the bidet drain plate, (2) in the sink and (3) on a plastic container containing cotton swabs.

11. A DNA mixture compatible with Ms. Kercher’s DNA and Knox’s DNA was also found in a Luminol-revealed blood-stain on the floor of Romanelli’s room, and in a Luminol-revealed bloody footprint in the corridor.

12. A second Luminol-revealed blood stain in Romanelli’s room yielded Ms. Kercher’s DNA.

13. A sample of blood from the small bathroom faucet yielded ONLY Knox’s DNA.

14. Guede’s DNA was found in fewer places than Knox’s: on Ms. Kercher’s purse, the left sleeve of her sweat jacket, her bra strap, in Ms. Kercher and on the toilet paper in the large bathroom.

7. Forensic Conclusions

In Common Law Jurisdictions, such as U.S. Federal Courts, U.K., Canada, & Australia, etc, Knox and Sollecito, as well as Guede would surely have been found guilty and would have failed appeals, if any were even allowed.

There would have been no possibility of crime-scene amateurs and public-relations hired guns to contend this, for at least three reasons: (1) they very conspicuously lack anyone of status qualified to do so; (2) the extensive testimony in closed-court hearings would never be so described in a public document; and (3) Common Law juries are “black-box” and in most cases including murder do no explaining (also judges sometimes forbid jury members from talking later).

The decisions in Italy widely suggest to Italians the main influence of Sollecito’s Mafia connections, of which Knox is a very lucky collateral beneficiary.

Friday, May 25, 2018

Telling Non-Development For Knox Re The European Court Of Human Rights In Strasbourg

Posted by Our Main Posters

1. New Non-Development

This is about Knox’s still unpublished “complaint” to the ECHR of 22 November 2013.

Knox apparently tried to claim to that court that Italy had violated one or several of her human rights.  As all legal power in Italy has moved to those Knox demonized, and as she has zero shot at a damages award, this is the one prospect Knox apologists still crow about.

This past Tuesday, under Chimera’s Burleigh post, Ergon posted this deflating message from the ECHR Press Unit (our emphasis added).

Dear Sir,
Thank you for your message and please find here the information we can provide in response.
1. Both parties’ observations have been received by the Court’s Registry.
2. No decision as to the admissibility of the application has been taken yet.
We hope this helps.
With best wishes,
ECHR ““ Press Unit

For ease of linking-to and continuity, we have moved the telling comments by James Raper (2), KrissyG and Peter Quennell that followed Ergon in the Burleigh thread to Part 5 of this new post.

2. Note The Big Media Fail

Ergon found out what all of the media could have found out via a single email. Sorry, BBC, but that is flat-out wrong. No excuse, though you are far from alone in this.

Knox apologists still repost Dalla Vedova’s wrong claim that the ECHR has already “accepted” Knox’s case. It has not.

Some even argue (as Avrom Brendzel tries to, with numerous errors of fact) that Knox’s felony conviction for life for framing Patrick will certainly be annulled. But it seems that was not even the subject of a Knox request (see Part 5 below for reasons why).

3. What’s Most Damaging To Knox?

Most damaging if the court does take the case would seem to be their figuring this out.  They could readily get there by analyzing the same documents we used for the Interrogation Hoax series (currently 21 posts) which are all now in English on the Case Wiki.

This is Italy’s trump card. ALL courts agreed that, charged and warned in front of witnesses that she should say no more without a lawyer, and under NO pressure, Knox pressed on and again framed her boss. 

4. Prior Posts Of Relevance

This post joins this group which are most of the series under the right-column link 24 ECHR Appeal Hoax.

1. Click for Post: Proof Released That In 5-6 Nov Session Knox Actually Worked On Names List

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

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

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

5. Click for Post:  Knox Demonizations: Multiple Ways In Which Her Email To Judge Nencini Is Misleading (Finn MacCool)

6. Click for Post:  Supreme Court Confirms All Three Were There And Lied, RS & AK Apologists Desperate To Downplay That (Machiavelli)

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

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

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

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

5. Comments Imported From Previous Thread

#1. By James Raper

Four and a half years down the line and still no decision as to the admissibility of Knox’s ECHR application.

Dalla Vedova argued two rather contradictory positions at the final appeal.

“How can we tolerate in Italy that trials can go on forever?” he asked the Court. Another was that he requested an adjournment of the appeal pending a decision from the European Court of Human Rights on his client’s complaint of a violation of her basic human rights ensured by the European Convention on Human Rights.

Had the court acceded to the request for an adjournment, we would still be waiting.

Was Bongiorno keeping the Knox camp in the dark as to the fix, or using him for cover?

Posted by James Raper on 05/24/18 at 04:51 AM | #

#2. By KrissyG

Delaying a trial is an old trick.  We saw that with Henri Van Breda: it took a year for police to even charge him (for the murder of his mother, father and brother with an axe) and he has remained free for another two years as the trial dragged on, adjourning for medical reports, etc.,etc.

The Knox ECHR hasn’t even reached the admissible stage.

(a) she applied too early.  You are not supposed apply until all channels are closed.

(b) she didn’t complain about supposed violations and torture at the time.

Her great hope is in Boninsegna’s MR.  However, that doesn’t really deal with her claims, but is in fact to do with police claims.  It was them who brought the charges, which was mandatory, given the press were told and still are being told of illegal “˜53 hour interrogations’ and being swatted across the back of the head.  But she didn’t report it so there is no third party verification it ever happened.

Boninsegna criticised the police for being “˜maternal’ and for hugging her in sympathy with her sorry plight.

AIUI the ECHR decision as to the admissibility of a case can coincide with their coming to a verdict at the same time.  However, as this is quite complex, it would likely be listed for another date, if admissible.

If it fails the admissibility test (whether it qualifies for their jurisdiction) then that will be the end of the matter.

Posted by KrissyG on 05/24/18 at 05:56 AM | #

#3. By Peter Quennell

Hi Ergon, James R and Krissy G:

Yes, strong signs of passive aggression against Knox and especially her PR (1) seemingly by the ECHR, (2) pretty well definitely (long-term) by her own lawyers, and seemingly even (3) by Boninsegna himself (see below for who he is) and (4) by the Supreme Court’s Marasca & Bruno, who bluntly labeled this ECHR appeal dead on arrival right there in their report.

On (1) the ECHR is very tired of the enormous flow of frivolous complaints from Italy at the appeal stages designed to lean on future courts. They back-burner almost all complaints from Italy.

On (2) here is the defense lawyers’ problem. None of them have really profited from this case, as the outcome was unpopular and the bending of three courts pretty obvious. In their books RS and AK hardly did them any favors. Bongiorno has pretty well given up law for politics. Guede’s lawyers walked away from him; Viterbo Prison legal help and a Rome group took over. Mignini was able to take a tremendous swipe against Maori in a complaint against him.

In 2009 they had publicly complained against the Seattle PR; back in 2008 they had publicly complained about Knox herself incessantly lying - possibly sparked by the fact that (as Chimera has long shown) she cannot lie CONSISTENTLY. (Passive aggression even by Knox against Knox? Our psychologists think so.)

So it has long leaked out of their chambers that this ECHR appeal is really a big fat nothing.  There could be no mention of the claim of hitting and not only because of the reason KrissyG mentions (no paper trail at the time) but also because:

(a) They had made those public complaints about Knox and the PR back in 2008 and 2009.

(b) If they had ever taken Knox’s claims seriously, under law they would be required to report them; if not done, both Knox herself and Italian prosecutors could charge them and at minimum their law licenses would be history.

(3) On Florence Judge Boningsegna. We know the ECHR asked for information on his ruling so this is the context. It’s complicated.

(a) This was a mandatory investigation and trial of allegations against the police Knox made on the stand in 2009 - KrissyG is right, only the police, Knox tried to include Mignini but had to concede he was not present.

(b) Knox would have lost in a heartbeat if the trial was held in Perugia. Knox lawyers shopped judges till they found one foolish enough to order that the trial should be held in Florence and Mignini (for no obvious reason) should be attached to it.

(c) Boninsegna is known as a mafia judge; he is actually in the Florence courts for that reason, having been moved from Calabria where he had way too many mafia chums.

(d) Sign of a leaned-on Italian judge, Boninsegna seemingly quite deliberately wrote nonsense. The transcripts of all Knox’s pre-arrest questionings we finally finished posting recently strongly dont support him.

(e) So as KrissyG noted, in the Boningsegna report the police (actually the Republic of Italy) lost because the police were accused of being too NICE to Knox! How exactly do they take THAT with a straight face through the appeal stages to the Supreme Court?! And how does that ruling help Knox with the ECHR?

(4) On Marasca & Bruno. Another sign of leaned-on judges (apart from their placing RS & AK at the scene of the crime). Marasca & Bruno essentially told the ECHR to piss off as the case had evolved beyond their mandate.

The defenses (not sure if Marasca & Bruno would give them a win) had tried to delay the final outcome until after the ECHR ruling. Bizarrely, this would have created a Catch-22 situation as the ECHR cannot rule until all legal processes are done with, thus placing RS & AK in legal limbo. The defense lawyers would have known that. More passive-aggression?

So there you have it. Passive aggression against Knox, in Perugia, Florence, Rome, and seemingly Strasbourg. Nice going.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 05/24/18 at 08:38 AM | #

#4.  By James Raper

On the 25th November 2013, just as the Prosecution were preparing to present their closing argument to the Court of Appeal in Florence, Knox presented the media with the following announcement -

“Today my lawyers filed an appeal of my slander [sic] conviction with the European Court of Human Rights.” (ECHR)

The appeal was in fact lodged on the 22nd November.

It was not, of course, a slander conviction but something far more serious. The Calunnia conviction was due to the fact that, and before officials charged with an investigation and bringing to justice those who had been responsible for Meredith’s murder, Knox had fabricated evidence against Lumumba knowing him to be innocent. She had blamed Lumumba for the murder, effectively as a witness present at the time.

She appealed her conviction to the Hellmann court and it dismissed the appeal and increased her sentence.

She appealed the conviction again, this time to the Supreme Court, and the 1st Chambers dismissed her appeal at the same time as annulling the Hellmann outcome. Her conviction for calunnia was therefore definitive.

The 5th Chambers nailed that conviction down even further, not only in a passage effectively telling the ECHR to piss off but by also by it’s finding that Knox was indeed present at the time of the murder. That disposes of any argument that Knox could not have known that Lumumba was innocent.

So what are we left with? The ECHR does not have the power to quash her calunnia conviction and the Italians are not going to re-open it. It is extremely unlikely that the ECHR would even suggest this.

So what was the point of the application? Given the timing of the application I have no doubt that it was an extra-judicial PR strategy to undermine, in the event of the Florence court dismissing her appeal against her murder conviction, any attempt to have her extradited back to Italy, particularly were there to be any ruling by the ECHR that her human rights had been abused.

In the event of any such ruling she might get some compensation (so as to be compliant with the Convention) but given what happened to Sollecito’s application for compensation for wrongful imprisonment, I can’t see it as being anything other than nominal, and there is still the not insignificant matter of her not having paid, as ordered, the compensation due to Lumumba.

On the matter of Knox’s acquittal on the long-standing charge of defamation concerning her allegation of mistreatment by police officers, there was not in fact any finding of fact as to mistreatment by Boninsenga. He acquitted her on the grounds, he said, that the correct procedure had not been used at the police station; that she was already a suspect and the law required her to have a lawyer present. Had that happened then no allegation of mistreatment during her questioning would have surfaced anyway. She was therefore immune from prosecution concerning defamation of the police officers.

Knox, of course, repeated the same allegations (being cuffed a couple of times) during her trial testimony, but she wasn’t on oath and the reason for that is that defendants can be expected to lie to save themselves. They are immune from prosecution there as well.

One might ask whether the Boninsenga rationale would also apply to the calunnia conviction as well. An interesting point but clearly, under Italian law, the answer is no, and I don’t think any sane legal system would countenance that.

I can’t see that the Boninsenga judgement, which is contentious anyway (Knox repeated her allegations of mistreatment and regarding Lumumba, in her Memorial, written when not being questioned), will help at the ECHR.

Posted by James Raper on 05/24/18 at 06:44 PM | #

Saturday, April 07, 2018

Knox Sings Pro-IRA Song In Bizarre Irish TV Chatshow Appearance

Posted by Our Main Posters

The Daily Mirror’s Report

Jim Gallagher of the Daily Mirror filed a somewaht cynical, disbelieving, relatively accurate report on Knox’s cascade of lies on Ray D’Arcy’s show.

Now 30-year-old self-styled journalist aka Foxy Knoxy - exonerated of the 2007 killing of Brit Meredith Kercher in Italy - belted out a version of Come Out, Ye Black and Tans on live TV

Amanda Knox aka Foxy Knoxy has appeared on a Dublin chatshow where she sang a pro-IRA song during a somewhat bizarre TV appearance.

The 30-year-old American gave a version of the Irish rebel song Come Out, Ye Black and Tans to a live audience during an appearance in which she appeared jovial, chatty and laughing.

Knox was convicted twice [actually no] of the 2007 killing of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, but later exonerated [actually no].

On the TV show last night she banged out a few words of the pro-IRA song tune on the The Ray D’Arcy Show chat show, on Irish national broadcaster RTE, in what she said was a nod to the “lots of Irish” people who supported her during her time in prison.

The now self-styled journalist said her followers in Ireland sent her CDs of the Irish rebel music to lift her spirits behind bars.

Ms Knox sang the chorus of one of the songs: “Come out ye’ Black and Tans, come out and fight me like a man.”

The tune is an Irish nationalist song which goads the English police for a stand-off during British-occupied Ireland.

Chat show presenter Mr D’Arcy told Ms Knox after her performance: “That’s the oddest thing I’ve ever witnessed.”

She replied while laughing: “I understood the fighting spirit of it, and I appreciated it.”
Ms Knox sang the Irish rebel song on a Dublin TV chat show

Ms Knox also spoke out about her ordeal and the weight of public opinion which pointed the finger at her over the death Ms Kercher.

“There is no middle ground with people who confront me,” she said.

“There are people who really latch on to the conspiracy theory idea [actually no] that I orchestrated a sex game to punish Meredith for her purity.”

She said people never said it to her face but on the internet.

“People who come up to me are very kind to me.”

Now working as a journalist in her native Seattle, Knox - dubbed Foxy Knoxy during the trial - said she had been portrayed as a sexual deviant and man-eater [actually no] by the Italian police and prosecution to get a conviction. They claimed the murder was the result of a sex game gone wrong.

“Why do they do that to every single woman they want to vilify?” [actually no]

“A good way to vilify women is by attacking their sexuality. As soon as they are a slut they are guilty of anything.

“It’s a lot easier to think that someone like me who has no history of violence, no history of mental illness, who led a totally peaceful life, could somehow rape and kill someone as I’m ‘sexy’.

“Meredith was sexually assaulted but they found the person who sexually assaulted her through his DNA, through his finger prints left in her blood in the crime scene and they still fixated on me having some kind of special sexual role.” [actually no]

She said in prison one of the chief guards, “who asked me for sex every evening,” told her she had HIV and to make a list of everyone she ever had sex with to work out who infected her. [actually no]

“I went back to my cell and my journal and wrote down every single person I had sex with in my entire life and that was seven people,” she said.

“The very next day the [guard] came into my cell and took my diary and delivered it to the prosecution and the prosecution delivered it to the media. [actually no]

“And the story came out that I had slept with seven men in two weeks and was the biggest slut that Perugia had ever seen and so of course I would kill someone.”

Knox said her life collapsed when she heard the guilty verdict.

“I did not realise the world was so unfair,” she said.

“There were a lot of crazy stories going out there and I was being called an adulteress and a femme fatale in the court room but I still thought none of that mattered.

“What mattered was the truth. The whole point of a courtroom is to boil down all this crazy information until all you get is the truth beyond a reasonable doubt.

“I was convinced this was all a big misunderstanding and I was going to go free.

“When that verdict came down that was an existential crisis for me.

“That’s when I realised that the courtroom is more like a battle ground of story-telling.

“The most compelling story and not necessarily the most truthful one wins.

“It didn’t matter how innocent I was, it didn’t matter that was the truth, the sexy story was that the slut from Seattle came and murdered the pure innocent woman from England. [actually no]

“A big part of my wrongful conviction depended on calling me a slut and reiterating that over and over again in people’s minds until I was just a dirty slut that anybody could project all their vitriol towards.” [actually no]

She said she had only met Meredith six weeks before her murder and the English girl had been very helpful and friendly.

Ms Knox said she hoped that one day she would be able to talk to Meredith’s family.

She said she was still in touch with her former Italian boyfriend, Rafaele Sollecito, who was convicted with her of murder but also exonerated, and was trying to find him a job in Seattle.

The two had spent the night together [actually no] before Knox, then aged 20, returned home to shower and change only to find her friend dead.

She was acquitted of the murder in 2011 and returned to the US. But she was convicted again [actually no] in her absence in 2014 before Italy’s Supreme Court definitively acquitted her and Sollecito in 2015.

A petty criminal whose DNA and fingerprints were found at the scene, Rudy Guede, is currently serving 16 years for the rape and murder of student Meredith with a knife.

Knox revealed how she spent 53 hours being interrogated by police after the murder. [actually no]

She said she was hit and eventually under duress agreed that her boss Patrick Lumamba was also involved.

“Certain interrogation technique are very good at getting people to confess whether they are guilty or not,” she said.

“In my case I repeatedly told police everything I knew and they told me I was lying or did not remember everything. [actually no]

“After hours and hours of being screamed at and being hit and being told that I was crazy I started to feel crazy. [actually no]

“I started to feel like the only answer that could possibly make sense was what they were telling me which was that I had amnesia and that I had witnessed her murder and that I was tragically confused. [actually no]

“I broke. They convinced me I had witnessed the murder and Patrick had something to do with it. I said ok and they jumped up and started high fiving each other and left to go and arrest him and there was no evidence against hm. [actually no]

“They just wanted to put someone inside. Next day they said case closed and they had no evidence, they just scared the bejesus out of a 20-year-old little girl who could speak their language like a 10-year-old.” [actually no]

Breaking down in tears on the Dublin chat show, she said: “I felt guilty for years for how they manipulated me but I learnt I’m not the only one this has happened to.

“They don’t have to hit you to get you to break, there is psychological manipulation that goes into tearing down your sense of security and sense of reality. [actually no]

“Before they even arrested him [Patrick] I was telling them no, this was wrong, that I didn’t remember it like that and I recanted. [actually no] They didn’t care. [actually no]”

Thursday, March 29, 2018

Bizarrely Jubilant And Way Too Exposed Amanda Knox Again Fails Liar-Analysis Tests

Posted by The Machine

Pamela Meyer, a highly respected liar spotter and fraud spotter, explains how she knows if someone is lying. TED Talks applies the telltale signs to Amanda Knox.

This brilliant video needs to be promoted as much as possible on social media websites. Most people can’t be bothered to read the official court reports, but they will watch a fascinating TED talk that last a few minutes.

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Dr Mignini & Dr Comodi Explain The Real Strength Of The Trial Case, Little Disputed In Italy

Posted by Our Main Posters

Because of subtitles watch in full-screen - click icon bottom-right when video starts

Some Context To The Video

This video subtitled and uploaded by Machiavelli shows a live panel aired in Italy on 27 December 2017.

The trial prosecutors are freed finally of professional requirements not to discuss any ongoing case they have a role in.

This is a rule not hampering American prosecutors, mostly elected, who make sure, in those few cases not plea-bargained that actually go to trial, the People’s case is being understood.

In the US an estimated 200,000-plus inmates are innocent but there because of unreported forced pleas. In Italy? None at all.

Italian citizens obtain their substantially more informed and accurate understanding of any ongoing case differently, by way of court documents posted on the Internet and frequent live TV.

The video hammers home the contrast between the perception of the generally highly-informed Italian pubic and the mostly mis-informed perception of the American and British publics.

Fine reporting was deliberately swamped.