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| Stefano Conti and Carla Vecchiotti |
Translation of the report submitted by Profs. Carla Vecchiotti and Stefano Conti of the University of Rome — La Sapienza to the Corte di Assise di Appello (Court of Appeals) of Perugia, Italy, regarding DNA evidence in the case against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito is now in progress. Vecchiotti and Conti were appointed by the presiding judge in Knox and Sollecito’s appeal trial, Claudio Pratillo Hellmann, to conduct an independent review of this evidence, which (like most of the evidence in the case) had long been seriously questioned by Knox and Sollecito’s defense teams and by outside observers.
The conclusions reached by Conti and Vecchiotti constitute a damning indictment of the investigation conducted by Italy’s Scientific Police, and in particular of the methods employed by the prosecution’s main forensic scientist, Dr. Patrizia Stefanoni. They lend official support to the already-widespread perception that Knox and Sollecito have been the victims of a scandalous miscarriage of justice.
