Amanda Knox DNA evidence contaminated, appeal court hears

Experts brand as unreliable the key evidence that Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA was found on victim Meredith Kercher’s bra The appeal by Amanda Knox and her Italian former boyfriend against their convictions for the killing of British student Meredith Kercher took a sensational turn on Wednesday when independent, court-appointed experts dismissed as unreliable forensic evidence crucial to the prosecution case. Two Rome university professors said there was no certainty that traces of DNA found on the alleged murder weapon belonged to Kercher. They added that the vital piece of evidence which linked Knox’s ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, to the scene of the murder – a trace of his DNA on Kercher’s bra clip – could have got there by contamination, as the defence maintained at the trial. The breakthrough for the appellants came just two days after their case suffered a hefty setback. On Monday, Rudy Guede, who has also been convicted and jailed for the murder, repeated his claim that Knox and Sollecito had carried out the killing. What sealed the case against them at their trial, however, was not so much Guede’s changed story as testimony from a string of police scientific experts that appeared to support the prosecutors’ claim that Kercher died in a bizarre sex game involving all three defendants. However, the appeal court’s experts were scathing in their criticism of the reliability of that evidence. “The international procedures for the inspection [of the scene of a crime] were not followed,” professors Stefano Conti and Carla Vecciotti said in their report. Nor had the police respected international standards for the collection and bagging of exhibits. The DNA traces on the knife “appear unreliable in as much as [they were] not supported by scientifically validated analytic procedures”. Knox and Sollecito are currently serving sentences of 26 and 25 years respectively for the murder. Guede was given a reduced, 16-year sentence after a plea bargain. Amanda Knox Meredith Kercher Italy United States Europe John Hooper guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 29, 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.