Waiting To Be Heard - A Memoir Part 46

I'd rest my chin in my hand, trying to look contemplative-a skill I'd developed during boring college lectures. But no matter how hard I tried to focus, my attention would wander, my head would bob, and the agente standing behind me would awaken me to the nightmare. More than feeling embarra.s.sed, I was terrified that my inattention would be interpreted as my not caring and become another mark against me-even though some of the jurors also habitually dozed off.

When testimony wasn't dull, it was disturbing. I couldn't stand thinking about Meredith in the starkly clinical terms the scientists were using to describe her. Did her bruises indicate s.e.xual violence or restraint? What did the wounds to her hands and neck suggest about the dynamics of the aggression? What did the blood splatter and smears on the floor and armoire prove about her position in relation to her attacker or attackers?

The hearings were tedious, gruesome, and enormously upsetting. But we were no longer at the crippling disadvantage we'd been at for two years. Now that the prosecution had been made to show their notes, testing, and some of the raw data, we finally had facts. And the facts supported what I had always known: Raffaele and I had had nothing to do with Meredith's murder. Meredith had never come into contact with Raffaele's kitchen knife. I hadn't walked in her blood.

I wanted to cross-examine the prosecution. I wanted to ask how the story presented with such authority could be so at odds with the truth. Thank G.o.d we had Dr. Sarah Gino and Dr. Carlo Torre, both forensics professors at the University of Turin, in addition to Dr. Walter Patumi, out of Perugia. They took the stand and, one by one, began demolishing each of the prosecution's claims.

On the witness stand, Marco Chiacchiera of the Squadra Mobile had explained that "investigative intuition" had led him to the knife. That flimsy explanation did not help me understand how the police could pull a random knife from Raffaele's kitchen drawer and decide that it was, without the smallest doubt, the murder weapon. Or why they never a.n.a.lyzed knives from the villa or Rudy Guede's apartment.

Then we heard the prosecution's hired forensic experts describe the knife as "not incompatible" with Meredith's wounds.

I wasn't the only person who was perplexed. The experts debated the meaning of this phrase as intensely as they did the physical evidence being presented.

During cross-examination, Carlo demanded, " 'Not incompatible?' What does that even mean? If the knife was compatible, wouldn't you have written 'compatible'? You wouldn't have bent over backward, twisting words around to create this ambiguous meaning. 'Not incompatible'? Am I to understand, perhaps, that the confiscated knife is 'not incompatible' if only because it's a pointy knife with a single sharpened edge? Am I to understand that any pointed knife with a single sharpened edge-most knives-would equally qualify as 'not incompatible' with Meredith's wounds? Yes?"

"Yes," the expert answered.

During the afternoon hearing, it turned out that Raffaele's knife was, in fact, not compatible. The blade was too wide to have inflicted Meredith's two smaller wounds.

The third and fatal wound was a gash to the throat. The pathologist said Meredith had been stabbed at least three times in the same spot. But the blade of Raffaele's kitchen knife, at 6.89 inches, was longer than the wound was deep-by more than 3.5 inches. Under Carlo's questioning, Professor Torre, a serious man in his sixties who favored lime-green gla.s.ses, explained that in a moment of homicidal frenzy, it would be highly unlikely for a killer to plunge a knife in only halfway, to 3.149 inches. And the odds would rise to impossible when you considered driving a knife in, to precisely the same depth, measurable to a thousandth of an inch, three times in a row. Torre brought in a foam bust and an exact copy of the knife to demonstrate how implausible this feat would be. I thought it was a good idea, but I couldn't watch anyone stab anything-even a dummy. The notion that anyone thought I could have done that to a person-to my friend-made me not just heartsick but feeling like I might throw up. I squeezed my eyes shut.

As he had done when the prosecution showed Meredith's stomach contents, the judge cleared the press and public from the courtroom so photos of Meredith's wounds could be projected on a pull-down screen. These were the same deeply disturbing autopsy photos Carlo had tried to show me seventeen months before. I knew then that I could never stand to look at them.

It kept me from glancing up.

But I couldn't choose not to hear. Dr. Torre said there was a scratch at the top of the lethal wound. The pressure had been just enough to nick the skin, he said, adding that the sc.r.a.pe was made from the hilt. The only way this could have happened was if the full length of the blade penetrated Meredith's neck. More proof that Raffaele's knife could not be the murder weapon.

At the next hearing Manuela Comodi, the co-prosecutor in charge of forensics for the trial, swept into the courtroom triumphantly carrying a flat cardboard box, a little smaller than the ones used for carryout pizza. After opening it, Comodi paraded it in front of the court, as though she were displaying the queen's jewels. Her pride showed on her face as the jurors and experts stood up, straining in her direction to get a good look at what was inside-the knife that had been confiscated from Raffaele's apartment was wrapped in a baggie. Only Comodi was allowed to touch it, to pick it up and hold its plastic-shrouded blade up to the light.

Her theatrics were exasperating. The prosecution continued to say that it was Meredith's DNA that had lodged in a small scratch on the knife blade. The prosecution still claimed this as incontrovertible proof that I had used the knife to kill Meredith. I knew it to be a regular kitchen knife that had last been used to prepare a salad.

After everyone had had a good look, Comodi gingerly closed the box and left the courtroom.

A DNA reading is a series of peaks that looks like an EKG. By a.n.a.lyzing the size of the peak in thirteen or more locations, scientists can be almost certain they have a DNA profile unique to one person-or that person's identical twin. Done correctly, the reading is more accurate than a fingerprint.

During the pretrial, Stefanoni testified that she had tested enough DNA from the knife to get an accurate reading. But now, a year later, Dr. Gino had seen the raw data, including the amount of DNA that was tested. If there was any DNA there at all, it was too little to determine using the lab's sensitive instruments, Gino said. Stefanoni had met none of the internationally accepted methods for identifying DNA. When the test results are too low to be read clearly, the protocol is to run a second test. This was impossible to do, because all the genetic material had been used up in the first test. Moreover, there was an extremely high likelihood of contamination in the lab, where billions of Meredith's DNA strands were present.

The prosecution said Stefanoni's methods were perfectly acceptable, because in proving that the knife was the murder weapon, she'd "struck gold." But an unbiased a.n.a.lyst would have thrown out the results.

What I couldn't understand was why this infinitesimal, unconfirmed sample found on a random knife that didn't correspond with Meredith's wounds or the bloodstain on the bedsheet-the murderer's signature- held any sway. Copious amounts of Rudy Guede's genetic material had been found in Meredith's bedroom, on her body, in her purse, and in the toilet.

Perhaps most telling, when the knife was tested for blood, not even a diluted trace was found, evidence that should have convinced the prosecution's scientists that any DNA that might have been found there had come from contamination-not from a cut.

But the prosecution didn't admit they had tested for blood until our experts found out for themselves.

The situation was similar to the prosecution's claim throughout the investigation, the pretrial, and now the trial that my feet were "dripping with Meredith's blood." My lawyers and I had spent hours trying to figure out why they thought this. We knew that investigators had uncovered otherwise invisible prints with luminol. Familiar to watchers of CSI, the spray glows blue when exposed to hemoglobin. But blood is not the only substance that sets off a luminol reaction. Cleaning agents, bleach, human waste, urine stains, and even rust do the same. Forensic scientists therefore use a separate "confirmatory" test that detects only human blood, to be sure a stain contains blood. Had the Polizia Scientifica done this follow-up test?

Under cross-examination during the pretrial, Stefanoni was emphatic. "No," she responded.

It wasn't until Dr. Gino read the doc.u.ments Judge Ma.s.sei had ordered the prosecution to share with us that she, and then the rest of my defense team, began seeing a pattern. As with the knife, it turned out that Stefanoni's forensics team had done the TMB test and it came out negative. There were footprints. But they could have come from anything-and at any time, not necessarily after the murder. What matters is that there was no blood.

On the stand, Stefanoni declared that the negative blood test was irrelevant. We knew we were looking at blood, she explained, because the luminol glowed more brightly.

"Is it true that luminol glows more when sprayed on blood?" Carlo asked Dr. Gino.

"No."

The prosecution had an answer for everything, even when it meant lying to cover up other lies.

Stefanoni a.s.sumed that because both Meredith's and my DNA were found in the hall outside the bathroom, I was connected to the murder. It was a startling mistake for a forensic scientist to make.

Human beings shed thousands of skin cells every hour and nearly a million a day. We all leave DNA wherever we go-when we rest an arm on a counter, eat a spoonful of ice cream, grab a steering wheel, or walk barefoot, as I did when I came home for a shower on the morning of November 2. Of course my DNA would be mingled with Meredith's in the common hallway between our bedrooms-we'd lived in the same house and walked on the same floor tiles for six weeks.

The prosecution had no evidence against us, and worse yet, they'd withheld information likely to prove our innocence.

More infuriating was that Stefanoni continued to argue the prosecution's inaccurate points during cross-examination.

Some things could not be proven or disproven. DNA doesn't show its age. Science has no way of knowing when I left footprints in the hallway or what time I was in the bathroom. Or how long Raffaele's DNA had been on Meredith's bra clasp-the only evidence that tied Raffaele to Meredith's bedroom. It meant that both Raffaele and I were in the same excruciatingly frustrating position.

When the white-suited Polizia Scientifica first swept the crime scene on November 2 and 3, the little strip of fabric with the bra fastener lay under the b.l.o.o.d.y cushion beneath Meredith's body, cut from the rest of the bra. The forensics team put a placard beside it, a.s.signing it the letter Y. But when they bagged the evidence in Meredith's bedroom and sent it to the forensics lab where Stefanoni worked in Rome, sample Y was overlooked and left behind.

Six weeks later, when the Polizia Scientifica returned to No. 7, Via della Pergola, they spotted the bra clasp again. Only this time, it was a yard from where it started, lying beneath a rolled-up carpet and a sock. Between the forensics team's two trips, other police units had ransacked the villa. Unlike the Polizia Scientifica, those units had made no pretense of keeping the crime scene safe from contamination.

Replaying the video of this second trip into the villa, Raffaele's forensics expert pointed out, "The clasp goes from one scientist to another, and we don't see gloves being changed. We then see it being put on the floor and picked up again. These procedures are all wrong ... By not changing gloves and by touching other objects, cross-contamination of DNA is highly possible."

When Stefanoni was asked how the bra clasp got from one spot to another without being contaminated, she responded, "e traslato"-"It moved"-the same phrase Italians use when they're talking about religious miracles.

"It didn't get contaminated in that process?" Raffaele's DNA expert asked her.

"No."

"Why?"

"Because DNA doesn't fly," she snapped.

"It was trampled and dragged across the floor and you're saying there's no possibility it was contaminated?"

Had Raffaele been in the room, his DNA would have been as abundant as Guede's. It would be illogical to suggest that it was left on a single small hook on Meredith's bra and nowhere else. Furthermore, one of Raffaele's defense experts pointed out that the genetic profile was incomplete, and could have matched hundreds of people in Perugia's small population. But the main point is that this piece of cloth and metal had been underfoot and moved around by the dozens of people who went through the house in the six weeks since it had first been photographed. The contents of the room had been moved, and many items piled in heaps. The cloth fragment had clearly been moved around the floor, and who knows where else.

The prosecution worked hard to convince the judges and jury that their forensic findings made sense.

One morning, Manuela Comodi, the co-prosecutor, told the court that to show her dedication to the case, she had brought in her own bra.

She was carrying a white cotton underwire bra, the closest match in her drawer to what Meredith had been wearing, although, she said, chuckling, it was larger than Meredith's. Comodi hung the bra on a hanger to mimic a person wearing it. Using her index finger, she showed the mesmerized court how Raffaele could have hooked his finger to pull the back strap of Meredith's bra (somehow leaving DNA on the clasp but not the cloth) and then sliced off the fastener section with a knife.

Jury members t.i.ttered. The explanation and demonstration were absurd, but no one looked skeptical. Are people actually buying this?