Amanda Knox Update: Newly tested trace evidence reportedly points away from Knox, but how will prosecutors respond?
(CBS) - There are new DNA test results in the murder case involving Amanda Knox. And that sound coming from Italy is Knox's prosecutors changing their tune. Will it be a canon to innocence or the refrain of guilt?
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Watch: 48 Hours: Amanda Knox: The Untold Story
Amanda Knox and her co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito are currently appealing their 2009 conviction for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in her bedroom in Perugia. It's their third trial in six years and it is progressing at the tortoise pace of a dial-up internet connection.
But on November 6, a tiny speck of matter, that weighs a couple trillionth of a gram, is going to make a sound like a kettle drum. It is evidence trace number 36-i. As Crimesider reported in September, trace 36-i is located on the blade of a butcher knife that was found in the kitchen drawer of Sollecito's apartment in Perugia in 2007. Italian prosecutors have said it is the murder weapon that killed Meredith Kercher.
Trace 36-i had never been tested, until now. And the official results are in, according to the Italian wire service ANSA. Trace 36-i contains Amanda Knox's DNA, no one else's - not Meredith Kercher's, and not the only man currently in prison for her murder, Rudy Guede's. If either Kercher's DNA or Guede's DNA were trace 36-i, the case in Florence would be all but over. Knox and Sollecito would be found guilty as charged.
But trace 36-i is Amanda Knox DNA and she used to prepare food at Sollecito's apartment. And, there is no blood on the blade. What more needs to be said?
Probably plenty. Prosecutors argue the defendants are guilty regardless of DNA.
The first new tune from the prosecution could be, There were two knives. Or it might be what British journalist Bob Graham heard several years ago from the then-lead Perugia prosecutor on the case: Amanda Knox could have orchestrated the murder, but never entered Kercher's bedroom. It's the refrain of guilt.
In a music canon, there's a lead melody and everything else imitates that lead. In March, the Italian Supreme Court declared that the results of the tests on trace 36-i would be "decisive." The Supreme Court wanted trace 36-i tested. The results will be officially entered into court on November 6.
Following the Italian Supreme Court's lead, the canon to innocence should be the only tune heard that day.