Comment author: brazil84 19 December 2009 06:15:47PM *  0 points [-]

Hold on a sec: Are we looking at things from the perspective of the initial evidence available to investigators? Or are we looking at all the evidence in its totality?

These are two separate but related questions:

(1) Does the initial evidence offer a reasonable basis to be suspicious of Knox and/or Sollecito?

(2) Does all the evidence in its totality indicate that Knox and Sollecito are guilty?

It seems to me you just jumped from discussing (1) to discussing (2). If you want to do that, fine, but in that case it's not fair for you to ignore later evidence which developed against Knox and Sollecito.

You are assigning the mop and bucket a value almost equal to DNA

I'm not doing that at all. The mop and bucket are one initial piece of evidence which, when combined with other initial pieces of evidence, form a reasonable basis to be suspicious of Knox and Sollecito.

Comment author: captcorajus 19 December 2009 06:30:10PM *  4 points [-]

How is the mop and bucket evidence of a crime??? That's an emotional response, not a rational one. You must prove 1) the mop and bucket was used to clean up a crime scene, and 2) that Knox and Sollecito were the one that did it. No proof of 1 exists, so how can you prove 2?

1) I'm saying that if you follow the evidence, Knox and Sollecito never enter the picture as suspects. I do not assign behavior as evidence of a crime without strong physical evidence to cooberate it. All we have initially are the behaviors.

2) The evidence in totality can't connect them to the crime or Guede. Guede is completely connected by the evidence. So how can you prove guilt?

I'm saying this: If you START with the cold hard evidence, and proceed from there, Knox and Sollecito are NOT suspects. Since they are not suspect, their behavior isn't probative, and everything that follows: "Foxy Knoxy", Vibrators in the bathroom, sex on a train, cartwheels at the police station have 0 value as evidence of a crime. Get it?

I'm time warping. Starting with the evidence to find the people, not starting with the people and then trying to find evidence to implicate them. Its a thought exorcise.

Comment author: brazil84 19 December 2009 05:19:37PM *  0 points [-]

In fairness, aren't you also starting with some or all of the following pieces of evidence?:

(1) A room in the crime scene apartment has been ransacked but no valuables (which were in plain view) were taken;

(2) A window in that same room has been broken with marks suggesting it was broken from the inside;

(3) the same window is on the second floor and can be seen from the street. Further, there is no obvious reason why a burglar would need to get in through an upper floor;

(4) Bloodstains indicate that the victim died with her bra on and the bra was removed a few hours later; and

(5) When the police arrived at the crime scene apartment, one of the victim's flatmates was standing there with her boyfriend and with a mop and a bucket.

Comment author: captcorajus 19 December 2009 06:03:54PM *  6 points [-]

1) Actually, Kercher's rent money was missing and Guede's DNA was found in her purse. After her murder he went clubbing and then hopped a train Milan. Where did he get the money to do that? To state there was no robbery doesn't jibe with the evidence. Knox had $2000 in her bank account, and Sollecito's parents are well off. Guede was a known drifter known for his money problems.

2) No, evidence was NOT that window was broke from the inside. The glass was inside the room, and a rock was found. The dispute arises because some glass was below clothing in Filomena's room. However, Filomena was allowed into her room to retrieve personal effects, so the exact placement of clothing is suspect. Furthermore, the building itself is fairly isolated and traffic along the road is minimal.

3) There is a truss next to the window making access relatively easy. An investigator for the defense, dressed in a suite and tie easily scaled it. Rude Guede was an accomplished athlete and basketball player.

4) That's an evaluation of the judge who accepted the prosecutor's contention of the muti person scenario. Scientific testimony at trial contradicts this assertion. In either case, this is evidence open to interpretation. Even if that were true, there is still no evidence that Knox or Sollecito were involved in moving the body! Putting them in the room a SECOND time hours later further creates a logic problem because no evidence of their presence is in the room! What are they, ghosts?? Even if you prove there was more then one assailant, you still have to prove those additional assailants were Knox and Sollecito... which you can't You must UNLEARN what you have learned my friend. ;)

5) No such evidence was presented at trial, and even if it was so, its completely meaningless. How do you get from "a mop and bucket" to "a three way sex crime"? You must have something stronger in addition to the observation for it to have probative value of a crime! If they cleaned the crime scene how did they leave behind Guede's fingerprints and DNA? Either is all there, or its all gone. You can't selectively clean up microscopic evidence... much less with a mop and bucket. Its laughable.

As komponisto stated, it is difficult to be cold in your rational evaluation. You are assigning the mop and bucket a value almost equal to DNA inside the victim when in real comparison they are light years apart in real value.

Comment author: captcorajus 19 December 2009 03:19:08PM *  9 points [-]

Here's a thought exercise, that for me clears the confusion in this case. Pretend that you don't already know who the suspects are in this case, and are looking at the evidence to try and find one for the first time. You have no preconceived notion as to who killed Kercher.

Your evidence comes in two weeks after the killing and you have a bloody hand print on a pillow, fingerprints elsewhere in the room, saliva DNA outside the victim and skin or saliva DNA inside the victim as well. All of this is of one person, Rudy Guede.

You look up Rudy Guede and you find that in the weeks prior to the murder he was involved in three separate break-ins involving a knife, but was not arrested. When you try to locate him, you find he has fled the country to Germany.

At this point, do Knox and Sollecito even come into this story as anything other than footnotes? There are no interrogations, no cartwheels, no rumors of bleach purchases, no "foxy knoxy", no stories of sex on a train, none of it. The knife in Sollecito's flat, with a minuscule amount of DNA on the blade that doesn't identify Kercher but can't exclude it never enters the scene. Neither does the bra clasp found 47 days later.

Blood drops of the victim found in a co-habituated bathroom with mixed DNA of roommates doesn't seem all that sinister.

For me, this clears up who the guilty party in this case quite nicely, and takes my "feelings" out of the equation.

Comment author: brazil84 18 December 2009 08:05:38PM *  0 points [-]

"So, you're suggesting that Knox and Sollecito are guilty, but for reasons other than the prosecution's argument."

Not exactly. I'm saying that there is good reason to be skeptical of the prosecution's scenario. Nevertheless, the evidence is sufficient to be reasonably confident that Knox and Sollecito were involved in the murder.

"If you're just saying, 'But captcorajus might be wrong,' that doesn't strike me as being terribly useful, without any further insight to explain why."

I'm saying, in essence, that captocorajus' argument rests on a false dilemma. Implicitly he is asking us to choose between 2 possibilities when in reality there are other possibilities.

"Or, are you saying the fact that Knox and Sollecito were in a courtroom as defendants is enough to conclude that they're guilty?"

No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that holes in the prosecution's case do not necessarily imply innocence on the part of the defendants. (As a practical matter, without knowing more, the fact that somebody is a defendant is indeed good evidence they are guilty. But here we do know more so I have not been relying on the mere fact of prosecution.)

Comment author: captcorajus 18 December 2009 11:02:24PM 3 points [-]

Might I interject here boys. My two options for the scenario were based on what the tangible evidence in the case indicates. There is certainly a 3rd possibly that people other than Sollecito and Knox are involved, BUT no evidence has been presented to indicate this so I didn't mention it.

Rudy Guede's involvement is about as certain as one can get without direct observation. His bloody handprind, his feces in the toilet and his DNA inside the victim All tangible, all verifiable by second parties.

No such tangible evidence exists for Sollecito or Knox. If they were there something of their presence MUST be there.

Innuendo, and behavioral analysis without corroborative evidence is not evidence of murder. Rudy Guede can't even be connected to Sollecito and Knox. No emails, no phone calls.... nothing. Rudy Guede is connected to the flat though through downstairs male roommates who testified at his trial that during one visit he fell asleep on their toilet.

This case, and the fever that surrounded in regards to Knox borders on misogyny. For Knox, the only bright side is they no longer burn witches in Italy.

Comment author: brazil84 17 December 2009 03:47:47PM 0 points [-]

It seems to me that most of those problems can be explained by postulating that (1) the prosecution's case is overstated; and (2) the prosecution's scenario of what happened is incorrect.

However, even if (1) and (2) are true, it does not mean that Knox and Sollecito are innocent or uninvolved in the murder.

By analogy, consider the OJ Simpson case. As I recall, there really were some serious questions about the prosecution's evidence in that case. Even so, it seems pretty clear (to me) that OJ was guilty.

Obviously the OJ Simpson case is very different from the Amanda Knox case. But the point is that police, prosecutors, and others are often tempted to try to turn a good case into a great case.

Of course one big difference with OJ Simpson is that the case fits into a very simple paradigm: the jealous ex-husband. So it's very easy for the prosecution to present a coherent theory (including a motive).

Perhaps a better analogy is the Annie Le case. It seems pretty clear who killed her, but it's not entirely clear why. Nevertheless, there will be pressure on the prosecutors to come up with a scenario for what happened and why.

Comment author: captcorajus 18 December 2009 04:42:16AM *  4 points [-]

There is a lot of what I call "noise" in this case. Things that MAY apply, but not all of them carry the same weight, thus it becomes necessary to organize my thought processes. I start with the hard evidence FIRST, not the other way around. I do not look at the people and then find evidence to implicate them, I look at the evidence first and then find the people.

By "hard evidence", I mean that evidence that can be observed directly or by repeatable scientific methods.

I refine my thought process even further by using these principles which state: 1. The simplest explanation that fits the facts is usually the correct one. 2. the more outlandish a theory is the greater the amount of evidence is required to support it, and 3. The further away you move from a causal event the less accurate your observations will be.

With that as a guide, the DNA of Rudy Guede inside Kercher becomes a white hot beam of guilt, and Knox's cartwheels with the police has almost no luminescence at all.

Given how much evidence is in the room where Kercher was killed leads you directly to Rudy Guede. The bedroom is the key to this case as that is where the murder took place. As you move further away from the bedroom, you are less likely to find direct connection to the killer or killers, so as I move out of the bedroom other things like mixed DNA in a bathroom of people who co-habituate get less consideration.

Given the preponderance of evidence that there is of Guede, logically then, this must also be true for Knox and Sollecito if the prosecution's theory of the crime is to hold true. However, no such preponderance of evidence exists for them. Knox's presence is non existent according the the physical evidence, and Sollecito's hinges on a bra clasp found 47 days after the crime. The more outlandish a theory is the greater the amount of evidence is required to support it, ergo which version of the crime does the evidence and logic support:

That a known burglar, involved in three separate break-in incidents in the weeks prior to the murder broke in and robbed, assaulted and murdered Kercher.

Or

That new lovers Knox and Sollecito with no criminal history whatsoever, conspired with relative unknown Guede to involve Kercher in some sex game and inadvertently killed her?

This leaves Knox, Sollecito and Lumumba footnotes in this story. Stories about bleach purchases, hip wiggling, knives in a residence not connected to the scene, Myspace pages, emials and raunchy tabloid stories about an attractive American female and her Italian boyfriend are relatively benign compared to fingerprints in blood, feces in the toilet and DNA inside the victim.

Using THIS method, which is the traditional method of deduction leads you to the guilty party. Using disassociated bits of information that you then try to connect to hard evidence found latter only leads to confusion. Bragging about it only leads to a need for obfuscation when the hard evidence contradicts your theory.

Comment author: captcorajus 17 December 2009 03:51:44AM 5 points [-]

komponisto, can I just say that you have very eloquently voiced my very thoughts on this case. In my blog article, "Logic Trumps Innuendo" I wrote the following:

"As I surf the net, reading a variety of comments in regards to this case there is much speculation about evidence in this case. Much of it was not used at trial, but somehow made it into the public consciousness through ongoing press leaks during the investigation, such as:

"Knox was seen with a mop and bucket the morning of the murder." What does that mean exactly? The innuendo would be that she cleaned the crime scene, but see the logic problems posed by that below.

"Knox purchased bleach the morning of the murder, there are receipts." No receipts were presented at trial, but even if there were what how is that probative?

"The found the murder weapon in Sollecito's flat." They found his knife, in his flat, in his drawer. Logic alone makes it unlikely that this is the murder weapon, and the prosecution's own analysis reinforces this. See logic question below as to why.

"Meredith's bra had Sollecito's DNA on it." Left on the floor of Knox's flat for 47 days after the murder, a variety of DNA including Sollecito's was found on the seperated clasp, not the bra itself.

... and on and on. I offer no explanation in this article for these, but simply pose some logic questions that address conflicting and incompatible ideas with the facts. This approach certainly reveals some troubling problems with the case against Knox and Sollecito. The unspoken question at the end of each of these is simply, "If this is so, how is that possible?"

Logic problem 1: They had the temerity to properly dispose of their bloody clothes and shoes, but then took the murder weapon home, cleaned it thoroughly, and put it back in the drawer?

Logic Problem 2: They cleaned the knife so well that luminal had no reaction, no blood was found on the knife, but the low copy skin DNA of the victim somehow remained on the blade???

Logic Problem 3: With a mop and bucket they somehow managed to selectively clean the murder scene clean of their DNA and fingerprints but leave behind Rudy Guede's??

Logic Problem 4: The bra clasp collected 47 days after the murder had Sollecito's DNA on it, but the bra itself did not???

Logic Problem 5: Meredith Kercher's bedroom door was locked from the inside and had to be broken down to gain entry. How did Knox get in there and remove all of her and Sollecito's fingerprints and DNA and leave behind Rudy Guede's?"

I too have felt this case begs for the the application of Occam's Razor. You simply can't connect Knox and Sollecito to Guede, much less put them into some three way sexual tryst. My logic circuits implode at the prosecutor's inane theory, which to prove you would need significantly more evidence than what was presented at trial.

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