Among wrongful convictions in the United States, the Russ Faria case stands out as being in most respects worse than the Knox/Sollecito case. However, in one aspect, the amount of evidence left by the alternative suspect, the Knox/Sollecito case is at least as bad, and quite possibly more egregious. Fortunately, Russ Faria was eventually exonerated, but one wonders how many other cases are out there like these two.
One of the problems was that two weeks after the crime, the formerly unknown owner of the forensics, Rudy Guede, surfaced. At that point the logical thing would have been to arrest Guede and let Sollecito and Knox go.
The unanswered question is - why did Giuliano Mignini keep them until charging them almost a year later, charging them with a "group crime" when nearly all of the evidence eventually presented to the 1st court did not rule out a single attacker, who was Rudy Guese.
The rationale for the 1st court to rule out a break in through Filomena's window was ludicrous, and almost never trotted out by today's "guilters". The "staging" of the break-in, in Filomena's room, was never actually investigated, it was inferred and asserted. Indeed, the activity of the postal police who were nominally "in charge" of the crime scene before the grisly discovery (to be fair, at the time they'd not known it was a murder scene) made the condition of the upper floor of the cottage virtually useless forensically. Even Filomena had been allowed to go fetch her laptop from her room, even after the cottage had been (presumably) sealed.
I'm still taken with the way John Follain (in his book) described the days following Sollecito's and Knox's arrest. Follain was the one author closest to the prosecution and police, often relating their very thoughts to the reader.
On one page he relates how Mignini had thought of Knox as a liar. A few pages later he relates that Mignini felt compelled to arrest Lumumba on Knox's say-so. Then when Knox is finally allowed to see a lawyer, Mignini pines with regret; seeing her relieved to have some legal help Mignini sighs and has a sense of regret that, "now we'll never know the truth." Even has Follain relates it, Mignini had seen himself as offering Knox an opportunity to relieve herself of a great burden.
Mignini kept going even after Guede's arrest, and all forensic issues could have been settled. Instead, 46 days later the Scientific Police are sent back to the cottage to get something, anything that will tie Sollecito to this crime. They "discover" the bra-clasp; not in the place it had been photographed 46 days' previous. Mignini openly is baffled why Sollecito won't turn on Knox, esp. after the initial success when they'd had him at interrogation and bullied him to sign a statement conflating two evenings of the previous week.
In the US cases, specifically Milke's and Lobato's, the police had had to rely on totally bogus and phantom confessions - the real surprise of which was that they were allowed in court? But then again the compromised crime scenes of Filomena's room and the murder room (the clasp) were also allowed in court.....
..... until the Italian Supreme Court in 2015 put an end to it with acquittals.
This case could/should have ended against Sollecito/Knox once Rudy was found, and failing that should have ended with Hellmann's acquittal in 2011.
