Forensic experts say Amanda Knox DNA evidence unreliable
(CBS) PERUGIA, Italy - Could a collective gasp of shock in an Italian courtroom yesterday signal that an American student may finally be freed from prison soon? The question emerged from inside a darken, dungeon-like appellate court in Perugia, Italy.
Amanda Knox and her former Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted of murdering British student Meredith Kercher in November 2007 in Perugia, where all three were students at the time. Knox and Sollecito were sentenced to prison terms of twenty-six and twenty-five years, respectively. They are currently appealing their convictions.
Unlike a criminal appeal in the United States, the combined Knox-Sollecito appeal is being heard by a judge and jury in a mini-trial in Perugia where new evidence and witnesses are heard.
Yesterday, the appellate trial heard from court-appointed DNA experts. The question before court was whether DNA on two critical pieces evidence was reliable. One was a bra-clasp belonging to the victim that allegedly has Sollecito's DNA on it. The other a kitchen knife found in Sollecito's apartment that allegedly has the victim's DNA on the blade.
In a very forceful presentation, the scientific experts, Stefano Conti and Carla Vecchiotti, told the court that the DNA, on both the bra-clasp and the knife, was completely unreliable because of incredibly shoddy police work done in both the collection of the evidence at the crime scene and the processing of the evidence at the Italian crime lab.
The findings are a huge victory for the defendants, who have been asking for an independent review of the questionable DNA evidence for years.
The experts testified that the Italian police crime lab, which processed the now discredited murder weapon, had twice failed to certify that the DNA sample gathered from the knife was not contaminated, either at the crime scene or in the lab itself.
For almost three years, the Italian police lab had kept many of its critical files on the case secret. Only the appointment of the two independent experts, last year, led to the lab opening up its secret files.
The experts spent nearly an hour instructing the judge and jury on the proper procedures to collect crime scene evidence. They cautioned that evidence should never be place on the floor of a crime scene because of the potential for contamination from the floor's surface.
After the experts' tutorial finished and the court's lights were dimmed, the judge and jury were shown video from the evidence collection at the Kercher murder scene in December 2007. The tape showed police technicians examining the bra clasp and then putting the clasp back down on the floor.
That is when the courtroom gasped; as if to shout, "Oh no, don't do that!!" And to add to everyone's shock, the experts showed close-ups of the technicians white gloves holding the bra-clap. The gloved fingers were smeared with dirt, adding another source of contamination.
The experts went on to cite 54 times, on the video tapes, where the Italian CSI-team failed to follow proper procedures to prevent contamination. At one point, one of the technicians complains the whole search is incredibly "disorganized".
Only the late Leslie Neilsen's Lt. Frank Drebin character in the Naked Gun movie series, could rival the sheer police ineptitude seen on the screen in Perugia yesterday.
Naked Gun was a comedy, but the Perugia videos have two young lives hanging in the balance. Will the now discredited DNA result in Amanda Knox and Rafffaele Sollecito winning their appeal and walking out of jail in late September. The jury is literally not in yet. Court resumes again on Saturday.
Complete Coverage of Amanda Knox on Crimesider
