SUPPORTERS OF AMANDA KNOX WANT YOU TO KNOW ......

Although the Italian judicial process differs from the American justice system we believe firmly in the integrity of their judiciary and have great respect for the citizens of Italy and their justice system. Judge Paolo Michelli is a distinguished judge of the highest caliber and we have full confidence in his ability to fairly weigh the evidence (or lack thereof), the credibility (or lack thereof) of witnesses and the conflicting theories presented in the ongoing hearings. We are troubled by the manner in which the crime scene was investigated and the resultant compromise of crucial evidence. We have deep concern that one prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, has leaked false and inflammatory information to the press and most troubling, that he himself is under indictment for abuse of office and conflict of interest, even though he continues to prosecute the Kercher case, as Corriere della Serra revealed on Jan. 18 of this year. A Florentine prosecutor, Luca Turco, has accused Mignini of being "in thrall to a sort of delirium" in his handling of another case, in which he fantasized amazing and complex Satanic conspiracies, a frightening parallel to the numerous farfetched theories he has advanced in his accusations of Amanda Knox. Mr. Mignini stands trial for those charges on November 14, 2008. We believe the Italian people, their government officials and their judiciary are entirely committed to integrity in the pursuit of justice in this case. The actions of Mr. Mignini are anomalous to the Italian justice system and that system should not be tainted by the actions of an individual prosecutor.
 

Judge Michael Heavey

King County Superior Court Judge, Michael Heavey, a member of the Friends of Amanda group, has written a letter to l’Onorabile Nicolo Mancino of the Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura (CSM) The governing body of the judiciary in Italy, regarding improper and false press leaks coming from the prosecutor's office, police, or prison officials.  It is our understanding that the CSM is currently investigating the false and improper press leaks.  To read Judge Heavey's letter please click here.  [click here to read letter] 

Judge Heavey's letter asked that the trial be moved out of Perugia because of the poisoning of public and judicial opinion.  Or in the alternative that judges who had not been exposed to the Perugia press be substituted for Perugian judges.  Judge Heavey did not ask the trial to be moved out of Italy, only out of Perugia.  The CSM (the governing body for the judiciary, see letter) has converted the letter from a change of venue request to, apparently, and ethical investigation of the prosecutor's office, police, and/or prison officials.

Overview

For almost a year, Italian prosecutors have been describing their case against Amanda Knox.  We're finally at a point where we will start to see if the evidence really exists, and if it will hold up in court.  Amanda's defense team is confident it won't.

The prosecution's theory is that three people -- Amanda, her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, and Rudy Guede -- collaborated on a murder.  This has never made sense.  Why would Amanda and Raffaele want to harm Amanda's roommate?  No one has been able to come up with a believable motive.

What is even more important is that no one has been able to show that Amanda and Raffaele had any pre-existing relationship with the third suspect, Rudy Guede. 

-- Raffaele never heard of him. 

 -- Amanda says she knew vaguely who he was because he sometimes visited her downstairs neighbors, but that's all. 

 It's hard to see how or why all three would get together and commit a murder.

 The Albanian Witness

But there is one person who claims to have seen these three together.  He is an Albanian immigrant who first contacted police in January, more than two months after the murder.  And he was a witness at the September 26 hearing, where he made a complete fool of himself.

 This man, Hekuran Kokomani, says he can't remember if he encountered the suspects on the night of the murder or the night before.  But he remembers clearly that it was raining.  This is noteworthy because weather reports show that it did not rain at all on November 1, the night of the murder, and it only rained a little bit on October 31, a night for which the suspects can prove they were elsewhere.

 So really, this witness is discredited even before we get into the details of his story, which are ridiculous. 

 -- He says he saw a dark shape in the middle of the roadway. 

 -- He approached it in his car and he tapped it with his bumper, at which point it sprang to life and was revealed to be Amanda and Raffaele. 

 -- They threatened him with knives. 

 -- In return, he threw olives at them.

 --  And then Guede showed up out of nowhere, explaining that the knives were for cutting a cake at a birthday party. 

People like this Albanian man are not unusual in criminal investigations.  For various reasons, such as a desire to be involved in something important, people come forward with bogus information.  Normally the authorities see through them quickly, especially when their story is as nutty as the one Kokomani dreamed up. 

But in this case the prosecution is desperate, so they presented this guy as a witness.  The judge and the defense attorneys tore him to shreds.   

To give you an example of how absurd it got, Kokomani said that when Amanda was yelling at him, he noticed a wide gap between her front teeth.  So the judge asked Amanda to smile, and she did.  There is no gap between her front teeth.   

Nor did Raffaele have shoulder-length hair last November, as the Albanian says he did. 

Nor could Kokomani have had a beer with Amanda and her Italian uncle in July of last year, as he claimed in court, because Amanda was not in Italy at that time and she does not have an Italian uncle.   

Incompetence at the crime scene

This whole investigation would be laughable if it weren't for the underlying facts -- a woman has been brutally murdered, and two innocent people and their families have had their lives devastated by a botched investigation. 

The police made extensive video recordings that show how they went about collecting evidence.  The problems are are obvious.

 They weren't careful with the way they handled evidence inside the room.  For example, when they removed the blanket covering the girl's body, they shook it out, which would allow DNA and other evidence to travel all over the room.

 But it gets worse than that.  They actively destroyed evidence inside the victim's room.

 The media have all seen pictures of one bloody footprint, found near the body.  The authorities presented this footprint as a unique specimen, but it was actually one of several. 

 For some inexplicable reason, one of the officers at the crime scene systematically scrubbed away these footprints until no trace was left.  By doing so, she made it nearly impossible for the authorities to establish their source.  The prosecution tried to argue that the one footprint that was recorded with photographs belonged to Raffaele Sollecito.  Sollecito's attorneys expended great effort proving this was not the case. 

At length the matter was resolved when Guede admitted he owned shoes compatible with the footprint and had discarded them when he fled to Germany after the murder.  But the question remains -- why would investigators sabotage important evidence?   

The computer folly 

Another incredible story surrounds the way investigators handled the computer hard drives they took into evidence.  These drives were removed from computers belonging to Meredith Kercher, Amanda Knox, and Raffaele Sollecito.   

Somehow the police hooked all of them up wrong and burned out the circuit boards that control the disks.   

That of course made the drives unreadable, so they passed them on to a professor at a technical institute.  He tried to revive the hard drives by replacing the circuit boards.  But if you look on the Internet, you'll see that this is a big no-no.  These circuit boards are specific, not just by model but by factory and production run.  Unless you happen to get lucky, replacing them won't work and sometimes makes matters worse.

 And that is exactly what happened in this case.  Only after these hard drives were thoroughly messed up did the authorities send them to a company that specializes in data recovery and has people who know what they are doing.  This company was able to recover the contents of two of the hard drives, but the one from Amanda's computer was scrambled, and the company couldn't recover the data. 

That is unfortunate for Amanda, because her defense team wants access to the evidence on her computer.  The prosecution is trying to argue that Amanda did not get along with Meredith Kercher, but photographs and videos on Amanda's hard drive would show otherwise. 

At this point, it looks as if those photos will never been seen.  The only remaining option is to send the drive to Toshiba, the manufacturer.  This would cost many thousands of dollars, but Amanda's family is willing to shoulder the cost.  Unfortunately, the Italian court has denied their request to do this.   

So as of now, the hard drive is in police custody, in a partly dismantled condition, and very likely holding evidence that could help clear Amanda Knox. 

The weak case against Amanda 

This should not  matter, because the evidence against Amanda is so weak.  In fact, this evidence has been contrived by putting a negative spin on information that has a completely innocent explanation. 

For example, investigators claim to have found traces of blood on some footprints Amanda left in the hallway. 

Except they're not sure it's blood.  It's possible, because there were traces of blood on the floor of the bathroom where Amanda took a shower.  But the footprints only became visible with something called Luminol, which also reacts with other substances, including household cleaners.   

So either way, here's what happened: 

-- Amanda came home after spending the night at Raffaele's place.  

-- She took a shower. 

-- She left these footprints after she got out of the shower. 

And that fits 100 percent with what she told the police. 

The police have also found Amanda's DNA at various places in the bathroom.  They have tried to make that sound incriminating, but she lived there and her DNA would have been all over the bathroom.  That kind of so-called evidence means nothing. 

The "double-DNA" knife

The one, central clue that hangs over this entire case is a kitchen knife recovered from Raffaele's apartment.  About two weeks after the murder, the police announced that Amanda's DNA was found on the handle of this knife, and the victim's DNA was found on the blade. 

It is entirely possible that Amanda's DNA is on the handle.  She prepared meals in Raffaele's kitchen, so that would be no surprise.   

But experts who have examined the DNA charts have told Amanda's defense team that the tiny speck of biological material from the knife blade was too damaged to give a meaningful result.  It's not a match with Meredith Kercher or anyone else. 

This is a complex subject, but here is the basic problem: 

-- If you look at a DNA chart, it is a line graph with a pattern of spikes, or peaks, that correspond to unique elements of each person's DNA.    

-- But the chart usually includes "background noise" in the form of smaller peaks caused by other factors besides DNA.  

-- When you get a sample that has been severely damaged by exposure to heat or some other environmental stress, the peaks corresponding to DNA elements are often missing completely or are so weak you can't separate them from the noise.   

-- You end up with an unreliable test result.    

That is what seems to be the case with this knife, and the prosecution has  done nothing to inspire credibility with regard to their claim that they've got a match for Meredith Kercher.  On September 16, they submitted a forensic report that included over a hundred pages of raw technical output, but offered no conclusion as to what all this output means.  Nor did the report include charts of Amanda's and Meredith's DNA so that comparisons can be made.   Nor did it include crucial information like how much biological material was obtained from the knife, how this material was removed, and how it was processed before it was run through the DNA testing machine. 

A new judge is in charge of the pre-trial now under way.  He wants to get to the bottom of this matter.  At the first pre-trial hearing on September 16, he said the prosecution's forensic report on the knife was inadequate, and he ordered them to get a new report together in time for the next hearing. 

At the September 26 hearing, the prosecution showed up with a new report -- but it didn't fill in the gaps or address any of the problems that had been pointed out on September 16. 

So, the judge canceled the planned testimony of a scientific consultant and told the prosecutors to prepare a third report in time for the October 4 hearing.  We will see if they get it right this time.  But sooner or later, the truth about this knife is going to come out, and it won't get anyone convicted of murder. 

The bra fastener 

In the mean time, the hearing on October 4 will focus on a different piece of DNA evidence that is almost as important -- a bra clasp that supposedly bears a microscopic trace of DNA belonging to Raffaele Sollecito.

 A bit of perspective is in order here.  Photographs show that this was a bloody, violent crime scene.   Massive amounts physical evidence establish the presence and involvement of one of the suspects.  This evidence includes a bloody hand print and DNA inside the victim's body. 

But for the other two suspects, who were supposedly right there in the room, wielding a knife and participating in this horrendous attack, the physical evidence includes no fingerprints, no clearly identifiable footprints, and in fact nothing except two biological traces -- on a knife and a bra clasp -- that are so small they cannot be seen with the naked eye.   

That is a very unusual, if not unprecedented, crime scene report. 

So clearly, in the case of the bra fastener, which was severed from the bra the victim was wearing when she was attacked, the defense will say any trace of Sollecito is the result of contamination.  

And this happens quite often when you're working with microscopic samples.  Early DNA tests required a relatively large sample, like a blood stain the size of a quarter.  But nowadays it's possible to test a sample that is measured in the billionths of a gram and is far too small to be seen by the naked eye.  Technicians use a chemical process to clone billions of copies of the DNA in that tiny sample, until they get enough material to run through the machine.  

With samples that are smaller than a speck of dust, it's not hard to imagine what can happen if a police officer or technician handles the sample with a tweezers or any instrument that is not surgically clean.  It's easily possible to contaminate a sample with DNA from another suspect, from the victim, or from anyone who happens to be nearby.  This contamination can take place in the field or in the lab, and there are many case reports showing that it happens quite often. 

And, in the case of the bra fastener, the back story does not inspire confidence.   It remained in the victim's bedroom for about four weeks between the time of the murder and the day in early December when the police made a return visit to the crime scene and decided to take it into evidence.  Video recordings clearly show that it was moved from one place to another during that intervening period.  No one has explained how or why that happened.  Nor do we know what other disturbances might have contaminated the crime scene.   

But we do know that Sollecito was in the cottage on a number of occasions prior to the murder, and he  was there the day after the murder before the body was discovered.  He would have left random genetic traces just as everyone does, and they could have been tracked around on shoes or blown around by the smallest air current.  If a microscopic scrap of DNA is the key piece of evidence with which the prosecution expects to convict Raffaele Sollecito of murder, they've got a hard battle ahead of them.   

The truth about what happened to Meredith Kercher 

What really happened in Perugia last November first? 

Once you put aside the wild theories the authorities have spun for the media, this case isn't mysterious at all.  The evidence shows it was a sexual homicide like many others.  The police have enough evidence against Rudy Guede to convict him in any courtroom in the world.   

-- He left a hand print, in the victim's blood, next to the victim's body. 

-- His DNA was found inside the victim.   

-- He admits he was at the scene of the crime.   

-- He admits to having some kind of intimate contact with Meredith but claims it was consensual and stopped short of intercourse.   

-- And he says someone else entered the premises and killed Meredith while he was in the bathroom. 

This last claim is the standard alibi killers give police when they can't deny being present at the scene of a murder.  It's known as the "bushy-haired stranger" story, and it's so common police often refer to the acronym, BHS.  One famous case in the U.S. is that of Diane Downs, who claims a BHS shot her children. 

Judges and juries almost never believe the BHS story.  But Rudy Guede has an advantage over most people in his situation, because the prosecutor is already trying to make the case that two other people were involved in killing Meredith Kercher.  Not surprisingly, after Rudy sat in jail for a few months, he modified his story.  Now he says the BHS was Raffaele Sollecito.  And he also claims Amanda Knox, who he originally said was not at the crime scene, was present after all.   

Guede wants to push the blame off on them.  It remains to be seen whether he will do so, but the factual evidence is strongly against him.