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| In this picture taken with a mobile phone, US student Amanda Knox's Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, right, sits with his lawyer Giulia Bongiorno, center, as Amanda Knox's lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova speaks to them ahead of a hearing in Sollecito and Knox's trial at an appeals court in Florence, Italy, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013. Sollecito has arrived at a Florence appeals court to make a statement in the pair's third murder trial over the death of her British roommate Meredith Kercher. Knox and Sollecito's 2009 conviction of murdering Kercher was overturned on appeal in 2011, freeing her to return to the United States. But Italy's highest court ordered a fresh appeals trial, blasting the acquittal as full of contradictions. Knox has not returned to Italy for the latest trial. |
FLORENCE, Italy
(AP) -- U.S. student Amanda Knox's defense got a boost on Wednesday
when a new DNA test on a kitchen knife failed to conclusively prove that
it was the murder weapon used to kill her British roommate.
An
expert witness testified that the minuscule DNA trace on the knife
handle near the blade showed `'considerable affinity" with Knox's own
DNA.
That confirmed what was already known
from two previous trials: that Knox's DNA was on the knife handle,
identified through another trace.
No DNA
belonging to the slain British student, Meredith Kercher, was
identified. Previous genetic evidence on the blade linked to Kercher had
been contested at earlier stages.
Outside the
court, Knox defense lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova told The Associated Press
that the testimony confirms his contention that the knife was used by
Knox solely for preparing food. "The report confirms that this is a
kitchen knife. It is not a murder weapon," Dalla Vedova said.
Luca
Maori, a defense lawyer for Knox's co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito,
said the trace's very existence also indicated the knife had not been
washed. "It is something very important," he said. "It is absurd to use
it for a murder and put it back in the drawer."
Prosecutors deferred comment for their summations, due later this month.
Knox
and Sollecito were convicted in 2009 in the brutal slaying of Knox's
21-year-old roommate in the apartment their shared in Perugia, and
sentenced to 26 and 25 years in jail, respectively.
The
conviction was overturned on appeal in 2011, freeing Knox after four
years in jail to return to the United States, where she remains for the
latest appeal.
Italy's highest court ordered a
fresh appeals trial, blasting the acquittal as full of contradictions
and questioning failures to retest the tiny DNA trace in light of new
advanced technology.
A spokesman for the Knox
family in Seattle, David Marriott, was seeking comment from Knox on
Wednesday's testimony, but he said she was busy with classes at the
University of Washington and doubted she would have anything to say.
The
DNA evidence on the knife found by investigators in a kitchen drawer at
Sollecito's apartment has been among the most hotly contested pieces of
evidence in the original trial and now in two appeals.
Prosecutors
have contended the knife was the murder weapon because it matched
Kercher's wounds, and presented evidence in the first trial that it
contained Kercher's DNA on the blade and Knox's on the handle.
But
a court-ordered review during the first appeal in Perugia, where the
murder happened, discredited the DNA evidence. It said there were
glaring errors in evidence-collecting and that below-standard testing
and possible contamination raised doubts over the DNA traces linked to
Kercher on the blade, as well as Sollecito's DNA on Kercher's bra clasp.
Sollecito,
in an emotional 20-minute-long address to the court on Wednesday, said
Knox was `'my first real love in my life, even if it was very late."
He
acknowledged he hadn't taken seriously enough the accusations at the
beginning because he was too caught up with his new romance with Knox to
grasp the severity of the situation.
`'Me and
Amanda were living the dawn of a carefree romance, and we wanted to be
completely isolated in our love nest," Sollecito said. `'It was a little
fairy tale."
He said he has since been living
a nightmare, and he struggled with his composure as he pleaded with the
court to acquit him. "I hope I'll have the chance to live a life, a
life, because at the moment I don't have a real life," Sollecito said.
"That's what I'm asking you."
Prosecutors begin their summations later this month, followed by the defense in December.
A verdict is expected in January.
