DNA experts called in on Knox murder appeal case

DPA/AFP/Perugia, Italy

Knox, the US student convicted of killing her British flatmate in Italy in 2007, is seen during a trial session in Perugia

The court appointed two DNA experts from the forensic medicine institute of the La Sapienza University in Rome to carry out the new study of the DNA evidence cited in the initial guilty verdict.

Experts Stefano Conti and Carla Vecchiotti will have 90 days to carry out their work, which will get under way in February, and then report their findings on May 21.

If it should turn out that new analyses of the DNA are not possible, then experts would have to be called in to review the controversial evidence used in the first trial in which Knox and her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, were found guilty in the murder of British student Meredith Kerchner in Perugia in 2007.

The lurid case, in which Kerchner’s half-naked body was found in the house she shared with Knox, with dozens of stab wounds and her throat slit, gained worldwide attention.

Prosecutors argued that Kerchner was the victim of a sex game which got out of hand.

In the appeal, Knox’s defenders hope the study by the forensic experts will show that the DNA findings used in the trial were faulty, or that the DNA traces found had been contaminated by prosecutors, making them inadmissible as evidence.

Both Sollecito and Knox steadfastly protested their innocence in the case, while also levelling accusations against Italian police investigators and their interrogation methods.

Lawyers for the 23-year-old American have described the appeal as a “key moment” in the case, saying it provides the first opportunity for independent experts to review the evidence which convicted her.

Knox came into court with her head bowed but turned and smiled at her stepfather, Chris Mellas, and mouthed hello to her best friend Madison Paxton, who has moved to Perugia and regularly visits Knox in prison.

She was sentenced to 26 years in prison for the November 7, 2007 killing of Leeds University student Kercher, 21, with whom she shared a house in the town of Perugia in central Italy where both were studying.

Sollecito, Knox’s boyfriend at the time, was sentenced to 25 years for his part in the murder and is also appealing his conviction.

A relaxed looking Sollecito chatted with his guards and smiled at journalists.

“This is a key moment. Today, for the first time, independent experts will be asked to examine the evidence,” Knox’s lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova had said ahead of the hearing.

Knox’s defence says a kitchen knife - found in Sollecito’s house and said to have Knox’s DNA on the handle and Kercher’s on the blade – does not fit the wounds on Kercher.

The absence of blood and low level of Kercher’s DNA on the knife mean it was probably contaminated in the lab and should be excluded, they say.

They also want a bra clip with traces of Sollecito’s DNA disregarded because it was collected days after the murder, had been moved, and is also likely to be contaminated.

Conti asked the judge for permission to remove the knife handle to test for DNA traces on the lower part of the blade but was told he and Vecchiotti would have to make a formal request to the court.

Mellas, who has been living in Perugia since September to help prepare for the appeal, said: “I’m happy the so-called evidence is being reviewed.”

“But it’s hard to be excited. Things have happened before that sounded good but then you saw how the trial ended. It’s a step in the right direction,” he said.

A third person, an Ivorian man called Rudy Guede, was sentenced for his part in the murder in a fast-track trial in 2008.

Knox, Sollecito and Guede were charged with sexually assaulting and killing Meredith in a drug-fuelled attack.

Prosecutors say that they want Knox to be sentenced to life in prison – the term they had requested at the original trial – if her conviction is upheld.

Mellas said he had visited Knox on Friday ahead of the hearing and said she was tired but “cautiously optimistic ... she wishes things would move more quickly”.

Knox’s friend Madison said “she’s doing the best she can to cope, but we both try not to get our hopes up too much”.

The Seattle native’s lawyers have questioned the reliability of the prosecution’s key witness, Antonio Curatolo, a homeless man who testified to seeing Knox and Sollecito the night of the murder.

Curatolo also claimed that he saw students on a bus that night coming from a discotheque in town, a detail challenged by the defence who say there was no disco open that night.

The court will call on the manager of the disco and the bus driver to testify in hearings scheduled for March 12 and 26 and April 16.

Kercher’s legal team will call on two further witnesses they claim support Curatelo’s story.

The outcome of the trial is expected later this year.

Knox has repeatedly protested her innocence and her case has continued to attract large-scale media attention, particularly in the US and Britain where protest groups have rallied to her defence.

“There’s a lot of support in the US. Those who’ve reviewed the case have come to the same understanding ... the evidence doesn’t support the verdict. Documentaries in the UK have come to the same conclusion,” Mellas said.

In November Knox was indicted on additional charges of slander for claiming police hit her during questioning to coerce her into giving a false confession.

She faces a separate trial on the slander charges from May 17.