The DNA evidence on the kitchen knife and bra clasp used against Amanda Knox is 'like a fictional CSI TV show' says world's leading forensic profiler

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Italian Supreme Court about to rule on guilt or innocence of Knox, 27, and her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito for murder of Meredith Kercher
Professor Peter Gill has analyzed the disputed evidence - DNA found on a kitchen knife and on Kercher's bra clasp
'The evidence is weak. What I'm saying is there are possibilities of transfers, of contamination,' the professor tells Daily Mail Online
His book 'Misleading DNA Evidence: Reasons For Miscarriages Of Justice' has been used by Sollecito's legal team in the latest appeal
Knox denies murdering Kercher, a British exchange student in Perugia, in what prosecutors say was a sex game gone wrong

Published: 18:18 EST, 24 March 2015 | Updated: 18:33 EST, 24 March 2015

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One of the world’s leading DNA experts, who has extensively investigated the murder of Meredith Kutcher, has claimed the forensic evidence against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito is ‘incredulous’ and ‘made up’ by prosecutors.'

Knox, 27, and Sollecito, 30, stand accused of killing the British student in Perugia and, on Wednesday, the Italian Supreme Court will either uphold or quash their convictions.

Professor Peter Gill, a lecturer of Forensic Genetics at Oslo University, Norway, looked in-depth at the DNA results from the crime scene using the originally analysis by the Italian Police Scientific Department and also a second independent analysis ordered by the judge in the first appeal.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Professor Gill admits that the evidence against Knox and Sollecito is very weak and and compares it to something out of the fictional CSI TV series.

He said: ‘It’s very, very tenuous to use this [DNA] evidence to link to the conclusion that it proves an activity such as stabbing a victim.

Professor Gill has analyzed the disputed evidence - DNA found on a kitchen knife and on Meredith's bra clasp - in his book 'Misleading DNA Evidence: Reasons For Miscarriages Of Justice', which has been used by Sollecito's legal team in the latest appeal to the courts.

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Waiting: The Italian Supreme Court is about to decide whether to uphold a guilty verdict on Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito over the murder of Meredith Kercher. Knox is in Seattle and will not go to Italy

Victim: Meredith Kercher, an exchange student from Leeds University, was murdered at the house in Perugia she shared with other students including Amanda Knox

Trio: Raffaele Sollecito (left) will be in court to hear the verdict . He would return immediately to jail if he is again found guilty, where Rudy Guede, (right) the first person convicted of the murder, is serving his sentence

He said: 'It's very, very tenuous to use this [DNA] evidence to link to the conclusion that it proves an activity such as stabbing a victim.

'You have to be very careful when you think of this, most people's idea of forensic science comes from CSI programs, but you have to remember forensic science has absolutely no connection to reality.

'People are conditioned to think there's a DNA profile, therefore, he or she must have committed the crime, actually nothing could be further from the truth, you have to be very careful how you think of it. The danger is if you start thinking someone is guilty, working backwards from there, fitting the evidence to the crime.

'There are some worrying features in this particular case, maybe because the individuals live in the apartment and their DNA will be everywhere. That's the issue in this case, there's no dispute that they were in the apartment, but for legitimate reasons.

'The evidence is weak. What I'm saying is there are possibilities of transfers, of contamination, which has to be seriously considered.'

On Wednesday, the Italian court will examine the verdict that found so-called 'Foxy Knoxy' and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito guilty of killing Meredith Kercher in the university city of Perugia in 2007.

Amanda Knox speaks to GMA after 2014 guilty verdict

New life: Amanda Knox is now engaged to her childhood friend James Terrano and the two live in Seattle

Escape: Amanda Knox and her mother Edda Mellas in October 2011 in Seattle when she had been able to leave Italy after her first murder conviction was overturned on appeal. She was found guilty again in absentia

Kercher was found in a pool of blood in a student house that she shared with Knox. She had been stabbed repeatedly and her throat had been slashed. After the first trial Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison and Sollecito to 25 but they were acquitted in 2011, having spent four years in prison awaiting trial then serving their sentence.

Knox then returned to the United States but in January last year a higher court overturned the acquittal and upheld the guilty verdicts, supporting the prosecution claim that the murder was the result of a sex game gone wrong.

Knox was then sentenced in absentia to 28 years in prison and Sollecito to 25, but as the case was immediately referred to the Supreme Court he was not jailed and no warrant was issued for Knox's extradition.

The hearing can uphold the conviction, overturn it or order a fresh appeal court case. If upheld Sollecito will go straight to prison, while Knox could face extradition.

But, as part of Sollecito's defence, it appears he's now distancing himself from Knox; his legal team has submitted a withering 306-page court document in an attempt to exonerate him.

He now claims he now can't remember whether Knox was with him and that he did not have a motive for the murder, but Knox did. Experts said it appeared to be 'brutal last ditch effort' to save his own skin.

Professor Gill is hopeful that his findings will help both defendants. He says the evidence used by the prosecution - and accepted by judge Alessandro Nencini in the second trial where Knox and Sollecito were found guilty - is consistent with contaminated DNA and, therefore, should be thrown out of court.

Scene of horror: Amanda Knox and Meredith Kercher shared this house in Perugia, where both were exchange students. Kercher, from Coulsdon, Surrey - on the outskirts of London - was found in a pool of blood

Distraught: Knox collapsed in tears when her first guilty verdict was overturned then left Italy. However she has been found guilty again and that could be upheld by the Italian Supreme Court this week

EXCLUSIVE: Amanda Knox heads to secret rendezvous (archive)

The pair were convicted largely on the tiny amounts of DNA from a large kitchen knife retrieved from Sollecito's kitchen drawer and Meredith's bra clasp, an item that was not collected from the crime scene until 46 days after the initial investigation took place.

'Simply because DNA is identical in every type of cell, same in skin, blood, semen etc, you can't distinguish which particular body fluid or tissue it came from,' says the professor at Oslo University.

'And another thing to remember, with low template DNA, we are detecting an incredibly low number of cells, and the issue with that is that secondary transfer can occur, that means, if I touch a table, I leave my DNA on there and that will stay indefinitely unless someone cleans it off. But, because it's there, someone could touch that DNA and then touch another surface and transport my DNA to another surface.

Peter Gill, Professor of forensic genetics at Oslo University

'This is one of the issues with the bra clasp, whether the DNA was transported by primary contact, which means it was touched by the defendant, or whether it was accidentally transferred from an investigator wearing plastic gloves. Plastic gloves are a very good way of transporting DNA from one area to another, so it's absolutely essential to change gloves when handling evidence and I found this wasn't done in this particular case. It was of serious concern.'

Professor Gill says: 'For the record, it's extremely concerning for the bra clasp not to be collected until 46 days after the stabbing and it's my understanding that it was then in a different position. And my other concern is that they didn't change their gloves in between handling evidential items.

'It's known that Sollecito had used the door handle to get into the apartment. But, if investigators had touched the door handle, then the bra clasp, they'd be transferring his DNA, unless you were very, very careful.

'How was the DNA examined? Were they examined in the same room? Were the surfaces cleaned? What contamination controls were in place, so they couldn't have been cross-contaminated? What was the evidence transported in? Where is the documentation? All of these questions are fairly standard really. My understanding is that there's not much in the way of records.

'The other issue is that for the [Judge] Hellman judgement [the first appeal], which led to an acquittal, the onus was on the prosecution to show that contamination had not occurred.

Hopeful: Raffaele Sollecito will be in court for the decision. He faces returning to prison if a guilty verdict is upheld but has spoken out in Italy in an attempt to convince the public of his innocence

Sole convict: Currently Rudy Guede, a drifter originally from the Ivory Coast, is the only person behind bars for the murder of Meredith Kercher.

'The [Alessandro] Nencini [second appeal] effectively reversed that and said it was up to the defense to prove that contamination occurred. It's impossible for the defence to prove that, you just can't do that, so to set up that judgement you gave the defence an impossible task. You can't prove whether or not contamination occurred, all you can say if it is reasonable whether it could have occurred.'

Professor Gill says that some of the prosecutors DNA evidence is 'fanciful' and 'incredulous'. He says that the evidence regarding the knife is a 'red herring' and has no bearing on whether Knox was involved in the murder.

'The knife was very strange. It came from a cutlery drawer, they carried out a DNA profile, and found Amanda Knox's DNA on the handle, but she's been using this cutlery to prepare food, so therefore you would expect her DNA to be there, it's not surprising,' he says.

'The problem is that if you read the judgement, the judge says she's handling the knife in a stabbing motion instead of a cutting one. There is no scientific evidence or literature which supports any inference of that kind. You can't use DNA evidence to support if they have used it for a stabbing or cutting food.

'It's extremely low level [DNA], typical of a profile in contamination for example. There is not even any evidence of blood, none at all, that is not disputed, so the DNA is a red herring, as if you've used the knife to stab someone, there should be blood. That wasn't found, so the prosecution said, well it must have been cleaned with bleach then.

'But then it's becoming rather fanciful because if you use bleach to clean a knife, then you would remove blood and also the DNA. The story becomes somewhat incredulous because what they're doing all the time, is that when they come up with something inconvenient, they simply make these stories up. There's not much DNA there, there's not much blood, so they say: 'Oh they must have cleaned it with bleach.' But there's no evidence of that.

'Another thing they said, the defendants selectively cleaned their DNA so that DNA wasn't found everywhere at the crime scene. If you contrast that with Rudy Guede's DNA, his DNA is everywhere, and in addition, he had no excuse to be in the apartment, so the evidence is quite convincing.

'On the other hand, Sollecito and Knox lived in the apartment, so it's going to be everywhere in the apartment and part of the background DNA. If I go to your house, I'll find DNA everywhere but it doesn't mean you've committed a crime of any kind.'

GUILTY OR INNOCENT? HOW JUDGES WILL DECIDE - AND WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN NEXT FOR 'FOXY KNOXY'

The Italian Supreme Court is ruling on Amanda Knox and Raffaelle Sollecito's second conviction for the murder of Meredith Kercher seven years ago.

It was made after the prosecution convinced the lower appeal court that there was DNA proof that three people were at the murder scene: Knox, Sollecito, and Rudy Guede, the drifter from the Ivory Coast who is still in prison for the crime.

Both Sollecito and Knox protest their innocence, arguing that the crime scene was contaminated and any DNA collected was therefore not viable.

But prosecutors say the stab wounds show more than one person was involved, and insist Knox and Sollecito fatally slashed Kercher while Guede held her down after she refused to take part in a drug-fuelled erotic game.

The appeals court also placed a lot of importance on a written confession Knox made under police questioning, in which she said she had been in the house and had heard the murder, but had not taken part.

She later retracted the statement, claiming it had been made under duress. Sollecito's legal team has said if it is used as proof against Knox, it should also be used to clear his name -- because in it Knox said he was not there that night.

While the pair have provided each other with alibis, claiming they smoked marijuana and slept together at another apartment on the night of the crime, Sollecito admitted last year that he could not remember if Knox was present all the time.

Kercher's family, who have waited patiently for a definitive verdict since the trial began in 2009, have said they want Knox to be extradited if her conviction is upheld.

If the court rules Knox is guilty, the case enters a whole new arena - as the Italian authorities will have to ask whether to extradite her, and the American authorities will have to decide how to respond.

The two countries have an extradition treaty which would make a request valid.

US authorities may try to argue she has been a victim of double jeopardy -- being tried twice for the same crime -- but the extradition treaty acknowledges that there is no limit on the number of times cases can be appealed under the Italian legal system.

The US might say returning Knox to Italy's notoriously overcrowded prisons would be a breach of her human rights, and offer to see her serve time back home. A pregnancy could also make it less likely for the US to hand her over.

Additionally, Knox can use the US courts to fight any extradition herself.

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz told AFP he believes 'she will be extradited if it's [the guilty verdict] upheld.'

'The Italian legal system, though I don't love it, is a legitimate legal system and we have a treaty with Italy so I don't see how we would resist,' he said.