Amanda Knox DNA appeal sparks legal battle by forensic experts

Forensic scientist threatens to sue after her work on Meredith Kercher murder is attacked in Amanda Knox appeal report Amanda Knox’s appeal against her conviction for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Italy faces a fresh challenge. A prominent forensic scientist, whose DNA evidence helped to convict the US student and her former boyfriend, has vowed to overturn the findings of an independent report that says much of her work in the case was unreliable. Knox returns to court in Perugiaon Monday, armed with the new forensic report, which she hopes will help lead to her being freed. Kercher was found with her throat slit in the Perugia apartment she shared with Knox in 2007. Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were sentenced to 26 and 25 years respectively in 2009 for the murder. A third suspect, Rudy Guede, had already been convicted for his role in the killing. Written by two independent experts from Rome’s Sapienza University, the 145-page DNA review rubbishes the work of Patrizia Stefanoni, the police forensic scientist who found Knox’s and Kercher’s DNA on a kitchen knife at Sollecito’s house and identified DNA belonging to Sollecito on a torn bra clasp found beside Kercher’s semi-naked body. The report claims Stefanoni ignored international DNA protocols, made basic errors and gave evidence in court that was not backed up by her laboratory work, rendering the knife and bra strap worthless as evidence. But Stefanoni has vowed to fight back during three hearings devoted to the DNA reviews. “I am angry about the false statements in this report and ready to come to court to highlight the past record of these experts,” she told the Observer . “I am also looking into taking legal action against them. What international DNA protocols are they talking about? The Italian police is a member of the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI), while they are not.” Both Stefanoni and one of the report’s co-authors – Carla Vecchiotti – are influential figures in a restricted circle of DNA experts in Italy and are no strangers to headline-grabbing cases. Stefanoni’s work helped a British court in June convict an Italian, Daniele Restivo, of the ritualistic murder of Heather Barnett in Bournemouth in 2002. Vecchiotti has recently made the news in Italy with her work investigating a drug addict’s death in police custody and the murder of a teenage girl in Puglia. Soon after she was chosen to review Stefanoni’s work on the Knox case, Vecchiotti claimed that documents had been withheld from her. The final report, co-authored with Stefano Conti, bemoans the scant detail Stefanoni used to back up her findings. After discovering there was no DNA left to check on the knife or the bra clasp, the experts retraced the steps taken by Stefanoni, concluding that the DNA trace of Kercher on the blade was so weak it could not be reliably matched – or was at best the result of contamination – and quoted Stefanoni admitting in court she should have double-tested her result to be more convincing. Stefanoni claimed she had no need to repeat tests since the experts for the defence were on hand to witness her work. “And it was good enough to show it was Kercher’s DNA,” she said. “A small amount, but good quality.” Turning to the bra clasp, the report concludes that since it had been at the crime scene for 46 days before being collected, it was vulnerable to contamination. Stefanoni’s testing was in any case full of errors, the report adds – a charge she said was “simply not correct”, adding she was “very keen” to defend her work in court. The experts quote numerous US police and FBI experts on the risk of low DNA results and poor evidence handling, prompting one Italian police source to claim they were being fed information by Knox’s defence team. “We followed the guidelines of the ENFSI, theirs is just a collage of different international opinions,” said Stefanoni. The three days of DNA hearings, tomorrow, 30 July and 1 August, will be followed in September by final arguments, with the appeal verdict now expected around 25 September. Amanda Knox Meredith Kercher Italy Europe Tom Kington guardian.co.uk

Posted by on July 23, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.