LondonJohn
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- May 12, 2010
- Messages
- 20,841
Agree with all of that. Unfortunately, Machiavelli account is effectively using the the gaps in the work of investigators against Ms Knox - reversing the burden of proof. What he simply cannot seem to understand is that a failure to confirm blood by testing cannot be twisted to mean that the absence of blood has not been proved and that therefore there remains circumstantial evidence for the existence of blood upon which a court may reasonably rely. It is outrageous.
This is a burden of proof question. We already know that even Italian law does not permit the use of circumstantial evidence that is not precise - in this case, the alleged circumstantial evidence of Ms Knox having committed the murder being that Ms Kercher's blood found in Ms Knox's bare footprints outside the bedroom is supportive of a finding of guilt despite there being no evidence whatsoever that she tracked the blood from the bedroom into the hallway.
I agree. First off, a critical factor to note is that regardless of the nature and outcome of whatever TMB tests may or may not have been done in this case, a positive confirmatory test is always required in order to state with proper confidence that there was human blood present.
Secondly, on the value of circumstantial evidence, I remember a little while ago here we had a discussion on the relative probative value of this sort of stuff. I would totally agree with Anglo (IIRC) that a Luminol positive is circumstantial evidence, from which one is entitled to draw the inference that human blood may have been present.
Unfortunately, here is yet another area where I think the defence teams erred massively in the Massei trial and subsequent appeals. They should have argued very strongly (and correctly) that Luminol positives without 2-part TMB positives (for blood), let alone without any confirmatory positives, mean that the inference of blood present can only be an extremely weak one, and should therefore be hugely discounted as unreliable by the court.
I realise the defence teams argued (correctly) that many other substances could give Luminol false positives, but they should have made it explicitly clear that there are proper ways to overcome this issue, and the ways of doing it (2-part TMB test followed by confirmatory test) either were not done at all by the "crack" forensics goons, or they were done and their negative results were suppressed.