In September of 2009 Sara Gino said that they did not receive the dates on which items were tested.
The Sara Gino testimony came after the defence claims were rejected by the court and the trial resumed. One would have to think that if Gino's story was relevant then the lawyers would have included it in their objections in mid-September 2009 .... She produces the missing dates argument on 26 SEP 2009, almost a fortnight after the motion to dismiss.
Is this supposed to be any more relevant than talking about Barbie Nadeau?
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This is all interrelated, Matthew, thanks to the efforts of the PR campaign, which sometimes must feel that it scores points, like with national network television interviews for Edda and Curt, and also shoots itself in the foot, like with the unjustifiable photos of the sisters in front of the cottage.
Where does the Elizabeth Johnson report lie? Well, for me it's definitely part of the PR campaign. If there was anything of value for Amanda's case in the analysis that Elizabeth Johnson could have done, it would have been presented in court in Italy months earlier than when it appeared in the press. In fact, it appeared in the media (not court) only a few days before the end of the trial, when closing arguments were underway.
I quite like the comment made by poster "ez" below the
The New Scientist summary article of the Johnson letter:
"
I know they are specialists in their field, but were they asked to review the evidence, and did they have access to all of it? Just seems weird that they are disputing evidence in a case they don't seem to be involved with, otherwise, why send an open letter and not testify?"
Indeed, we still don't know who engaged Johnson, nor what data she was given to review, nor who gave it to her, nor what she asked for, nor what may have been withheld from her (by whoever gave her what she did study or glance at).
As Elizabeth Johnson well knows, not asking for and reviewing all available information is detrimental to making a sound conclusion. Here's
implicit criticism of Elizabeth "Libby" Johnson for not making full use of all information which she could have used.
In her limited report, Johnson says of Raffaele's DNA on the bra clasp: "
The bra clasp was recovered from the floor of the victim’s bedroom, 47 days after the murder, and 46 days after the initial evidence collection at the crime scene .... Handling and movement of this sample has compromised its probative value. The laboratory results for this sample cannot reliably be interpreted to show that the DNA of Raffaele Sollecito was actually on the bra clasp at the time of Meredith Kercher’s murder, and it does not establish how or when this DNA was deposited or transferred."
Translation: "well, maybe there's a theoretical possibility that Raffaele's DNA came from contamination, a possibility which we can't really prove"
I don't see the significance of the 46 days. As
the following article shows, DNA evidence is useful 19 years after the fact.
During those 46 days, the cottage was sealed, no intrusion was detected, the forensic technicians did not coincide with the days that inspections were carried out at Raffaele's place. In the other DNA thread which was set up, we saw that DNA on dust is not measureable for forensic purposes.
So, perhaps the reason that Johnson's report ended up being more of a publicity PR stunt than a useful probative test or analysis, is simply because someone realised that her conclusions wouldn't get much mileage in a courtroom.
