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Boost for Knox appeal as judge orders DNA review
Kercher murder convict is ‘happy’, but spectre of Guede hangs over case
Amanda Knox, the American student convicted of murdering Briton Meredith Kercher in Italy in 2007, was "in shock but happy" yesterday after a judge ordered a comprehensive review of the DNA evidence in the case.
Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellman's decision is a huge boost for Knox's appeal and delighted her supporters - and her family, who were in Perugia for the hearing. As the decision was read, Knox was visibly emotional while her mother, Edda Mellas, and stepfather both wept.
Her co-appellant and one-time boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, was also relieved, smiling at his family from the dock, the Observer reports. Speaking outside the court, Mellas said her daughter was "stunned", adding: "She is in shock but happy – this brings hope."
The appeal rests on two pivotal pieces of forensic evidence: DNA found on a knife and on the clasp of one of Kercher's bras.
Defence teams for both Knox and Sollecito have asked for an independent review of the forensic analysis of the knife, found in Sollecito's kitchen. Police said it contained DNA traces of both Knox and Kercher but defence lawyers say the quantities were so slight as to discredit the result.
The torn bra clasp, meanwhile, is alleged by Sollecito's legal team to have been contaminated with his DNA during the investigation. It was found in Kercher's room 49 days after her death, during which time it had been moved in error by investigators.
The decision to review this DNA evidence is great news for supporters of Knox and Sollecito. But – and it is a big 'but' – the fact remains that the decision to reject their co-accused, Rudy Guede's, appeal on Friday is very bad news indeed.
Guede now faces 16 years behind bars after exhausting all his opportunities to appeal. He had claimed that Knox and Sollecito carried out the murder while he was in the bathroom in the same flat, listening to his iPod.
The problem for Knox and Sollecito is that in rejecting the Guede defence's version of the night of the murder, the appeal judge has accepted the prosecution's version: and that implicates Knox and Sollecito.
The prosecution argued successfully that the three had carried out the murder together. This version is now accepted as the final verdict on Guede – and it would therefore be awkward if the verdict in Knox and Sollecito's appeal contradicted it.
According to one magistrate involved in the Knox case "it is very rare that one sentence would contradict [another] definitive sentence." ·
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"The problem for Knox and Sollecito is that in rejecting the Guede defence's version of the night of the murder, the appeal judge has accepted the prosecution's version: and that implicates Knox and Sollecito."
This isn't a problem for Knox and Sollecito. They are innocent and have a different judge in a different trial. Guede's trial, appeals and judges were considering the case against him, not the case against Knox and Sollecito.
They were not parties in his trial and were not represented there. Knox and Sollecito barely knew of Guede's existence. Their defence claims that Guede acted alone and that is what most people who have studied the case in detail believe.
Is this about whether Knox and Sollecito killed Kercher, or whether they can twist their way out on a technicality? If they have committed murder they should pay, regardless of the technical competence of the evidence gathering. It's not about Knox. A girl died, remember.