Amanda Knox

[Itchy Brother]

I believe this will be overturned soon, and rightfully so.

Forensic experts attack Amanda Knox trial evidence

PERUGIA, Italy — Independent forensic experts took the stand on Monday to attack key pieces of evidence used to convict U.S. student Amanda Knox of the murder of her British roommate in the Italian city of Perugia in 2007.

The two court-appointed experts, Carla Vecchiotti and Stefano Conti, told an appeal hearing that the knife thought to have been used to kill 21 year-old Meredith Kercher carried no trace of blood but may have been contaminated with other DNA traces.

Presenting the findings from a report released last month, they said police had used the same gloves to take different pieces of evidence during their initial examination of the house the two women shared in the university town of Perugia.

Hi Miss Conspiracy,

I've selected this part of your post for a reply not as a criticism of your beliefs (although I am convinced they are guilty), but as a perfect example of how shoddy the reporting is on this case.

The second paragraph says the knife had "no trace of blood" and "may have been contaminated with other DNA". The following paragraph says "police had used the same gloves to take different pieces of evidence".

From those two paragraphs a novice might conclude that the forensics team could have contaminated the knife by neglecting to change gloves. But this is impossible. Why? Because the knife was collected from her boyfriend's apartment on a completely different day than the collection of evidence from the cottage (the scene of the murder).

Furthermore, blood or not, the prosecution, defense, and the independent experts are all in agreement that Meredith's DNA was found on the blade of the knife and Knox's DNA was found on the handle. It is crucial to note two things about this: Meredith's DNA was on the knife and Meredith had never been to Sollecito's apartment.

What the independent experts (aka C&V) were alleging, in fact, was that Meredith's DNA was erroneously found on the blade of the knife by way of contamination within the testing equipment in the forensics lab. They assumed that several pieces of evidence were tested using the same equipment (which is true to some extent) and that Meredith's DNA was present from an earlier analysis when the knife sample was tested.

Unfortunately for them, they neglected to check the records of when those various samples were tested. It turns out that their proposed contamination path can be ruled out conclusively because several days had passed between the time the knife sample was tested and any previous tests from this case were run in that lab. Furthermore, dozens tests on samples from other cases had been run on that same piece of equipment in the interim.

Finally, I fully respect your ability to reach a conclusion on your own. I just caution you to be careful in evaluating the data. Getting accurate information is like pulling teeth.