Kercher murder case: a revolving door

There were no winners in the Perugia courtroom. Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito have just lost four years of their lives for a crime they insist they did not commit. The family of the British student Meredith Kercher are no nearer to establishing who participated in her gruesome murder. Their conviction, backed by previous court rulings, that it was more than just one man, Rudy Guede, who was sentenced to 16 years for his role, remains undented. But there are plenty of losers. Chief among them is the Italian criminal justice system itself.

The first of the charges to be levelled at it is the pace at which it limps along: the accused were in prison for a year before the first proceedings began. The appeal took 11 months but consisted of only 20 sittings. This alone hands a weighty power of incarceration to investigating magistrates. It is all too open to question whether Giuliano Mignini, who is himself appealing against a 16-month sentence for abuse of office and who believes he too is a victim of a conspiracy from his investigation of earlier high-profile cases, was the right man to investigate this case.

The appeal itself hinged on the trustworthiness of the forensic evidence against Knox and Sollecito. The bra clasp which tested positive for Sollecito's DNA was not discovered until 47 days after the murder took place. Videos show how investigators passed it around with contaminated gloves. Evidence central to the prosecution's case could easily have become contaminated. The professionalism of the forensic team left much to be desired.
Read MORE : http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/04/kercher-murder-revolving-door