Amanda Knox’s Appeal Will Play Out as Murder Movie Films

After a brief hearing in late November, Amanda Knox’s appeal process is set to begin again in Perugia on December 11. The Seattlepi.com’s Andrea Vogt says the appeal makes its case along two fronts: offering alternative suspects for the murder of Meredith Kercher, nominated by prison inmates, and continuing to critique the DNA evidence. 

Convicted child killer Mario Alessi has three other inmates who back up his claims that Rudy Guede told him Sollecito and Knox had nothing to do with the murder, while Mafia snitch Luciano Aviello says his brother did it. The DNA challenge is perhaps trickier because, in essence, Knox’s defense has to argue that “everyone else” has higher forensic standards than Italy:

The amount of Kercher’s DNA found on the blade was such a trace amount it registered with a “too low” reading when analyzed.

A top geneticist at one of Europe’s top forensic labs at the University of Salzburg confirmed in an interview with seattlepi.com that it is possible to amplify such a small amount of DNA, as Stefanoni did, until DNA can be identified.

But the expert added that it would not be allowable unless the result could be reproduced, something police biologist Stefanoni said under cross-examination could not be done.

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Meanwhile, the race is on for the Lifetime movie about murder of Meredith Kercher to come out–in March–before Amanda Knox’s appeal might free her (the Seattlepi.com’s source says that a reduction in sentence, if anything, is more likely). A Cambridge grad student with a remarkable likeness to Kercher has been cast opposite Hayden Panettiere’s Amanda Knox. Director Robert Dornheim professes not to care that much about the legal wrangling: “What interests me more is the psychology and personality of the protagonists rather than the blood of the crime and the search for those responsible.”