It's a strange case, the circumstantial evidence heavily favours they are guilty, the DNA is sparse and the contamination angle leaves way too much room for reasonable doubt.The following points can't be ignored.
More than one person attacked Meredith Kercher. From the time of Rudy Guede's final sentencing,[3] the Court has accepted that more than one person attacked Meredith Kercher, with an unusually strong report that pointed towards Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito as the other attackers. Meredith was dressed, awake, and standing for the attack, yet did not defend herself. Unusually, she had no defensive wounds but for three tiny (0.24 inch or 6 mm) cuts on her hand[4], indicating an inability to express normal reflexes, flinch from the small cuts to her neck, or attempt to block the incoming blows with her hands or forearms. Indeed, in addition to wounds which fit two different knife profiles[5], she suffered numerous compression or restraint bruises to her elbows, wrists, and face. At the trial, consultants for Knox and Sollecito each proposed a single-attacker scenario but could not agree whether this lone wolf had attacked from the front (Torre, Amanda's consultant) or from behind (Introna, Raffaele's consultant).[6] At the appeal, under Judge Hellmann, Sollecito's defense team introduced two witnesses to testify first, that Guede had acted with two people other than Knox and Sollecito, and second, that two people excluding Guede had carried out the attack after mistakenly entering the home. The Supreme Court faulted Judge Hellmann for ignoring their sentence of Guede and supporting the single-wolf theory, which they found unsupported by the facts. They direct the new Appeals Court in Florence to see what evidence ties Rudy Guede together with Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in the cottage at the same time.
Someone returned to move Meredith. As is detailed by Judge Micheli (who convicted Guede for his part and committed Knox and Sollecito to trial to answer for the evidence of theirs) Meredith's body was discovered in a position and location different from that in which she died, judging by the lividity reported by the medical examiner and an indentation in her shoulder of a bra strap (with a corresponding impression on the floor). She had died and rested on her shoulder to the right of the room, wearing her bra, and was moved to center of the room and her bra discarded at her feet, soaked through but nowhere near any blood. He notes that the blood droplets on the cups show she was wearing the bra while still breathing, but her chest, which the bra had been covering, remained clean, indicating no breaths were being drawn when or after the bra was removed.
The bra clasp, cut or torn off from the bra the victim was wearing and originally hidden under the victim, had Raffaele's DNA on the hooks. No plausible argument for contamination was successfully made. Stefano Conti, the independent reviewer who testified to this point, could only suppose that "anything is possible." The Supreme Court strongly rejected that finding, and Judge Hellmann's acceptance of it, stating that the contamination must be proven likely, and not merely presented as a hypothetical possibility.
The knife recovered at Sollecito's apartment contained the victim and Amanda Knox's DNA. In her court testimony Carla Vecchiotti, one of the pair of independent experts who reviewed the DNA evidence at the first appeal, as well as forensic scientists from the Scientific Police, ruled out contamination in the laboratory with respect to the knife, owing to the six-day interval since testing items related to the Kercher case. When confronted with the knife DNA result in 2007, Raffaele responded with a fabricated story about accidentally pricking Meredith's hand while they were cooking together. Meredith had never been to his flat, and they had never cooked together.[7] The Supreme Court ruled the Scientific Police's findings must stand, absent any new proof. Another trace containing human DNA was found on the blade of the knife [8] by the independent reviewers, Stefano Conti and Carla Vecchiotti, who argued the trace was too minute too test, even though renowned forensic expert Professor Novelli argued that newer, more sensitive tests would be quite able to successfully test the sample. This test was performed in October 2013 and found to be Knox's DNA.
A bare footprint made in the victim's blood was discovered on the mat in the bathroom. Rudy's bloody shoe prints lead from Meredith's room directly down the hall and out the front door. The bathroom print, which could not have been made by Rudy Guede, is highly compatible with Raffaele Sollecito's right foot. His defense expert presented a crudely altered footprint diagram in the Massei court, to try to prove it couldn't be his client's, but the judge ruled it was more compatible with Raffaele, and completely ruled out that it could have been Rudy's.
Knox's DNA was found mixed with the victim's blood in the room where the burglary was staged, and in the bathroom they shared; some of this blood was Amanda's. Amanda testified that the bathroom was clean the day before the murder.
Footprints compatible with Knox and Sollecito's, and made in the victim's blood, were discovered when the forensic investigators tested the crime scene with luminol.
The burglary was staged, and there is no one other than Knox and Sollecito who would have any motivation to alter the crime scene that way. Broken glass had fallen on top of the scattered objects, meaning the window was broken after the ransacking, and Luminol revealed the presence of two traces of the victim's blood on the floor, showing conclusively that whomever had tracked it in had done so after the girl was dead. Raffaele knew nothing had been stolen in the course of this supposed burglary, assuring the 112 (911) operator of this fact well before the occupant of the room had come home and verified it for herself.[9][10]
Amanda Knox intentionally lied to the police to discourage them from considering Meredith's locked door suspicious. In her email home Amanda relates a scene of rising panic as she and Raffaele shout for Meredith, climb the balcony to try to see in her window, and Raffaele attempts to force the door open, but only splinters the frame. She says it was then they decided to call the cops. Despite all this concern, they did not mention the door, or their worries about Meredith, to the communications police who arrived unexpectedly to return Meredith's discarded cellphones. Filomena and her friends arrived shortly thereafter, and it was Filomena who said that it was not Meredith's habit to lock her door. Amanda falsely offered that this was not true: Meredith had locked it before, even to take a shower. The Supreme Court rules this is in itself proof of an attempt to prevent the discovery of the body, with all the implications that has for her guilt.
Knox and Sollecito's alibis are contradicted by each other, by physical evidence and by witness testimony. While this does not directly implicate them in the murder, they have clearly lied about what they did on the night of the murder and the following morning. It is inconceivable that they would risk lying about their activities if they were not involved in Meredith's murder. It is one thing to claim they cannot remember due to the influence of drugs. It is another to knowingly lie. The recent ruling confirms that they lied repeatedly.
Raffaele withdrew support for Knox's alibi, claiming that he lied at her request. He elected to not testify, and he refused to confirm that Knox was with him the night of the murder, for the entire trial. Confronted with the news that Raffaele had ceased to support her alibi, Knox quickly changed her story, placing herself at the cottage and falsely accusing an innocent man of committing the deed.
Amanda Knox's false accusation of her boss Patrick Lumumba. The appeals court has been directed by the Supreme Court to seriously consider this as yet more evidence of her guilt.
