Analysis and implications of the miscarriages of justice of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito

AbstractThe case of the ‘murder of Meredith Kercher’ has been the subject of intense media scrutiny since 2007 when the offence was committed. Three individuals were arrested and accused of the crime. Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were exonerated in March 2015. Another defendant, Rudy Guede, remains convicted as the sole perpetrator. He was implicated by multiple DNA profiles recovered from the murder room and the bathroom. However, the evidence against Guede contrasted strongly with the limited evidence against two co-defendants, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. There were no DNA profiles pertaining to Amanda Knox in the murder room itself. She was separately implicated by a knife recovered remote from the crime scene (discovered in a cutlery drawer at Sollecito’s apartment), along with DNA profiles in a bathroom that she had shared with the victim. Upon analysis a low level trace of DNA attributed to the murder victim was found on the blade of a knife, along with DNA profiles attributed to Amanda Knox from the handle. However, there was no evidence of blood on the knife blade itself. A separate key piece of evidence was a DNA profile attributed to Raffaele Sollecito recovered from a forcibly removed bra-clasp found in the murder room. There followed an extraordinary series of trials and retrials where the pair were convicted, exonerated, re-convicted and finally, in March 2015 they were finally exonerated (no further appeal is possible). Since Knox and Sollecito have been found innocent it is opportune to carry out an extensive review of the case to discover the errors that led to conviction so that similar mistakes do not occur in the future. It is accepted that the DNA profiles attributed to them were transferred by methods unrelated to the crime event itself. There is a wealth of material available from the judgements and other reports which can be analysed in order to show the errors of thinking. The final judgement of the case–the Marasca-Bruno motivation report–exposes the illogicality of much of the previous court proceedings that led to the convictions and provides useful guidance for judges to follow