She looked perplexed as she turned the key and swung the barred door open. I rushed out, jogging down the hallway, even though it wasn"t permitted. I called back to the guard, "I"ll be back in a second!"
Don Saulo was in the chapel leading a group of prisoners in Bible study. I rushed inside, beaming, and hugged him. "It came out!" I whispered. "It"s good!"
When I pulled back, I saw that he"d teared up. The women stared. They"d seen Don Saulo cry plenty of times, but they"d never seen me excited. "What happened?" one asked.
"The forensic report came out. It supports the defense," I said. "I might actually be freed!"
"You see! There is G.o.d! There is G.o.d!" exclaimed Tessy, one of the Nigerian women I"d help write letters to her family. She jumped up and hugged me. So did Beauty, another Nigerian.
I said good-bye and went back upstairs. At the gate to the hallway, the agente saw me and glared.
"I"m really sorry," I said. "I had to tell Don Saulo the news about my case."
"You could have told him tomorrow," she grumbled.
The rest of the evening I flipped channels, watching news report after news report, wanting to hear the words again and again-"Svolta giudiziaria. Nuova speranza per Amanda e Raffaele"-"Judicial turning point. New hope for Amanda and Raffaele."
Chapter 34
June 30October 2, 2011
The next morning I arrived at the Hall of Frescoes with a lighter heart. The journalists called out, "Amanda, what do you think of the new findings?" "Are you excited?" "Do you think you"re going home?"
I didn"t answer, but I liked the tone of these new questions.
I could see my mom trying to suppress her glee. When I got to the table, Carlo squeezed my hand. Raffaele nodded and smiled. We were all trying to contain ourselves. We weren"t in the clear yet, but we were closer than we"d ever been. And I think we all had the deep-seated fear that somehow the prosecution would flip the findings and convince the judges and jury that the old report was the right report. I knew they"d try. They"d been publicly embarra.s.sed.
This time the trial was going our way. I was delighted-I hoped it wasn"t obvious-when the experts criticized the Polizia Scientifica"s procedures. My DNA was on the knife handle, but the DNA trace on the blade was "unreliable," because Patrizia Stefanoni had ignored international protocol in testing such a tiny amount. It could have come from contamination, they said.
Professor Stefano Conti showed the video of the Polizia Scientifica collecting evidence when they returned to the villa six weeks after Meredith was killed. The professor zoomed in on the dirty latex gloves the investigators wore. The police"s own recording showed them pa.s.sing the bra clasp back and forth and then putting it back on the floor to photograph as evidence. "There are a number of circ.u.mstances that don"t follow protocol or proper procedure," Conti said in something of an understatement.
By the video"s end, he"d identified more than fifty mistakes the forensics team had made, including waiting six weeks to collect the evidence, using the wrong type of bags to collect evidence, wearing gloves dotted with blood and dirt, and picking up Meredith"s bra and underwear and touching her body barehanded.
"Today was a profound, clear, and unequivocal a.n.a.lysis of the DNA on the bra clasp," said Raffaele"s attorney Giulia Bongiorno. "DNA on the bra clasp attributed to Raffaele Sollecito was the only evidence on which he was convicted. This so-called evidence has fallen apart."
As the weeks went by, I was starting to have faith that this judge wouldn"t overlook the mistakes the police had made.
As expected, the prosecution and the civil attorneys tried to delegitimize the experts by saying they were biased in favor of the defense and complaining that neither expert was qualified.
They were reaching.
The co-prosecutor, Manuela Comodi, said Conti and Vecchiotti were lying. Show us the exact moment when the bra clasp was contaminated, she said. If we couldn"t prove it was contaminated, we couldn"t claim it.
Vecchiotti and Conti"s response: Following protocol is the way a forensic scientist proves that contamination doesn"t happen. The forensics team picked up the bra clasp that was found in a different part of the room, put it down, photographed it, and picked it up again, and you"re saying there wasn"t a high likelihood that it was contaminated?
You can"t prove that the glove touching the bra clasp was contaminated, Comodi told the experts.
Conti and Vecchiotti said, "We have a picture of the glove. You can see the dirt."
The prosecution said you have to prove that the glove had Raffaele"s DNA on it.
Conti and Vecchiotti"s final words on the subject: No, we don"t. It"s enough to show that the glove was dirty and that the bra clasp was moved from one place to another, that it wasn"t picked up for six weeks-that protocol was violated.
That day, July 30, was the last hearing before the August break. Judge h.e.l.lmann announced that he wanted the court to return to session on September 5. The co-prosecutor objected. "I was hoping to still be on vacation with my daughter then," she said.
On vacation with your daughter! I screamed in my head. I wish I could be on vacation with my mother! You"re worried about extending your vacation and you don"t care that I"ve missed out on almost four years of my life!
Judge h.e.l.lmann set the next hearing for September 5.
I didn"t know when the verdict would come, but the closer we got, the more nervous I felt. I couldn"t eat, my hair was again falling out in clumps, I was covered in hives, and my hands shook involuntarily. I often burst out crying. Mainly I couldn"t relate to the uninhibited enthusiasm of my family, friends, and supporters. When Corrado visited in August, he asked, "Why are you so worried, Amanda? Everything"s going to be fine. You"ll see. Just relax."
I couldn"t even draw a full breath.
The closest I came to unwinding was the time I spent playing music and talking with Don Saulo. The weather was too hot to walk in the afternoons, too hot to move during the day, almost too hot to think. I wrote lots of letters to James and others in Seattle, and to Laura in Naples. I read. I daydreamed about the four possibilities that awaited me when Judge h.e.l.lmann read out my verdict. Life imprisonment? Twenty-six years? A lower sentence? Acquittal? I broke my own rule and counted the days until September 5. I knew I shouldn"t. It made the thirty-seven days between court dates crawl by.
When September finally arrived, being back in the courtroom helped me regain a tiny bit of control over my hypernervousness. It meant that things were happening again. It was better to focus on the momentum than the waiting.
The prosecution hired two other forensic experts to testify that contamination can be said to occur only if you can prove precisely where, when, and how.
One of our DNA experts, Sarah Gino, emphasized that Patrizia Stefanoni had been withholding data from the very beginning.
The defense"s next expert, Carlo Torre, testified that the police"s DNA testers had found no blood on Raffaele"s kitchen knife. What the independent experts had found were traces of potato starch. If the knife had been cleaned with bleach, as the prosecution claimed, the starch wouldn"t be there-and bleach wouldn"t have entirely diluted the blood, if blood had ever been on the knife in the first place.
The prosecution asked for a new, independent review of the knife, but Judge h.e.l.lmann rejected the request. Instead he announced the schedule for closing arguments and the verdict-October 3.
Then there was yet another short break before closing arguments began.
In a fit of optimism, I decided what belongings I"d leave behind if I were acquitted. I didn"t want the jeans and sweatshirts that I a.s.sociated with prison or any of the day-to-day stuff I needed to exist-my camping stove, pots and pans, pens, paper, markers. I gave Chris books each time he came to visit. Over the weeks, he took away twelve boxes, each holding twenty to thirty books.
Packing made me nervous. I"d done this before and then had had to return to prison. It was embarra.s.sing to sort my things in front of guards and other prisoners who probably thought it was futile. Some people were excited for me; others pulled away. Guards and prisoners kept telling me, "Promise you"ll write to us. Promise you"ll remember us."
I"d stay in touch with Don Saulo and Laura, but I didn"t want to take the prison with me.
If my hopes were finally to come true, I"d be prepared. My belongings sat in a canvas bag in my cell. But I kept my pictures of family and friends out. I needed to look at them in my lonely moments-and I"d really need them close if things didn"t go well in the end.
Closing arguments began on September 23 with Perugia"s chief prosecutor, Giancarlo Costagliola, and Mignini insisting, "All clues converge toward the only possible result." The men asked the jury to ignore the hype in the media that favored Raffaele"s and my acquittal, to uphold our conviction, and to keep the Kerchers in mind. Mignini said, "If you want, go ahead and believe that Rudy Guede is the only one, but we don"t believe in fairy tales, and neither does the court."
I"d steeled myself for his detailed description of what I would have said to Meredith and how I"d killed her, but it still hurt. Every word jabbed me like a sharp stick.
Mignini added that as further evidence of my guilt, I was "ready to flee Italy" if I were acquitted.
He was not quite right. After four years of wrongful imprisonment, I"d kayak home if I had to. But if I were acquitted, my leaving was hardly "fleeing."