A knife that prosecutors say could have been used to kill a British woman in Italy was shown in court on Saturday at the murder trial of her American roommate and an Italian codefendant.
The knife, wrapped in plastic and kept in a white box, was shown to the eight-member jury in Perugia during the trial of Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito.
Knox and Sollecito watched as the knife was brought into court.
The two are on trial on charges of murder and sexual violence for the 2007 death of Meredith Kercher. They deny wrongdoing.
The knife, handled by a court official wearing gloves and a face mask, was shown as three forensic experts were called by Sollecito’s defense to discuss the alleged murder weapon and other evidence they had studied.
Prosecutors allege the knife with a 16.5cm blade found at Sollecito’s house could be the murder weapon. They say it had Kercher’s DNA on the blade and Knox’s on the handle — a claim defense lawyers reject, saying the knife is too big to match Kercher’s wounds and the amount of what prosecutors say is Kercher’s DNA is too low to be attributed with certainty.
In Saturday’s session, forensic expert Mariano Cingolani cast some doubt on the knife’s “compatibility” with a wound to Kercher’s neck, which is not considered to be the fatal one.
“Many other knives in general are more compatible with that kind of wound,” said Cingolani, who was appointed by a Perugia judge before indictments for Knox and Sollecito were handed down.
Cingolani said one of three cuts on the victim’s neck would have been bigger if that knife had been used, given the wound’s depth.
However, the expert also cautioned that no firm conclusion could be drawn without knowing the position of Kercher’s neck during the attack or the elasticity of her tissues.
Cingolani, whose team did not carry out an autopsy on Kercher’s body but examined photos and videos of the procedure, said the 21-year-old died of combined loss of blood and suffocation. He said bruises on her neck suggest she might have been strangled and may have choked on her own blood.
Kercher’s body was found in her bedroom in the apartment she shared with Knox on Nov. 2, 2007.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Two former Chilean ministers are among four candidates competing this weekend for the presidential nomination of the left ahead of November elections dominated by rising levels of violent crime. More than 15 million voters are eligible to choose today between former minister of labor Jeannette Jara, former minister of the interior Carolina Toha and two members of parliament, Gonzalo Winter and Jaime Mulet, to represent the left against a resurgent right. The primary is open to members of the parties within Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s ruling left-wing coalition and other voters who are not affiliated with specific parties. A recent poll by the
TENSIONS HIGH: For more than half a year, students have organized protests around the country, while the Serbian presaident said they are part of a foreign plot About 140,000 protesters rallied in Belgrade, the largest turnout over the past few months, as student-led demonstrations mount pressure on the populist government to call early elections. The rally was one of the largest in more than half a year student-led actions, which began in November last year after the roof of a train station collapsed in the northern city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people — a tragedy widely blamed on entrenched corruption. On Saturday, a sea of protesters filled Belgrade’s largest square and poured into several surrounding streets. The independent protest monitor Archive of Public Gatherings estimated the
Irish-language rap group Kneecap on Saturday gave an impassioned performance for tens of thousands of fans at the Glastonbury Festival despite criticism by British politicians and a terror charge for one of the trio. Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November last year. The rapper, who was charged under the anglicized version of his name, Liam O’Hanna, is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August. “Glastonbury,
RSS