The undeniable fact that Stefanoni and the prosecution suppressed all the raw DNA profile data as well as large amounts of other relevant data in the Knox - Sollecito case presents an insurmountable barrier to any court in Italy (a Council of Europe member state) issuing a legally valid final judgment, under ECHR case-law, that Knox or Sollecito were guilty of Kercher's rape and murder.
Denial of the original evidence to the defense thereby preventing it from challenging that evidence, followed by conviction based on a reproduction or interpretation of the evidence, has been found by the ECHR to be a violation of Convention Article 6 (right to a fair trial). For example, in the case GEORGIOS PAPAGEORGIOU v. GREECE 59506/00, the ECHR judgment found:
"37. The Court notes that, unlike Fitt, cited above, the instant case does not concern the concealment of evidence, but the refusal to order production of the originals of documents used as evidence for the prosecution. ....
38. As to the numerous other items of documentary evidence referred to by the Government, the Court notes, as the applicant did, that the documents in question were very diverse and related to other defendants or did not serve as a basis for the applicant’s conviction.
39. Having regard to the fact that, in spite of his repeated requests, essential pieces of evidence were not adequately adduced and discussed at the trial in the applicant’s presence, the Court concludes that the proceedings in issue, taken as a whole, did not satisfy the requirements of a fair trial.
40. There has therefore been a violation of Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (d) of the Convention."
Some who attempt to follow the Knox - Sollecito case may not realize the significance - that is, the total lack of credibility - of alleged scientific or forensic results that are based on data that are found to be unreliable. In academic and government work, scientists who have been found to misrepresent their data or results or commit similar misconduct suffer negative consequences and papers based on such misconduct are generally subject to withdrawal from the literature. For example, see:
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-...fire-professors-for-research-misconduct-66352
Here is an excerpt from the above, illustrating the negative implications on the credibility of results or interpretations where the scientists did not (or could not) provide sufficient original data in support:
"The internal investigation committee produced a 1,000-page report and shut down Shi and Zhang’s labs on Thursday (August 22 [2019]). The committee found “
several examples of falsified or fabricated data that were among numerous irregularities in seven grant proposals and at least 13 scholarly papers sampled from their work,” according to the UK [University of Kentucky] statement.
The committee stated that
the researchers provided “very little” of the original data requested for the investigation and concluded that the data’s absence was “inconsistent with NIH or UK expectations and resulted in an inability to validate” how the data were represented in grants and publications, according to the UK statement. The findings were handed over to the federal Office of Research of Integrity, which handles misconduct cases that involve federal grants."
A more detailed press release on the above may be of interest; it is at:
https://www.uky.edu/prmarketing/statement-research-misconduct
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