No, it doesn't require a large and sophisticated conspiracy. Innocent people get jailed and sentenced sometimes; that's they way justice works. It's not perfect. There's a emperical basis for the claim that miscarriages of justice happens, and that this is seldom a result of a conspiracy. That is not a skeptic position. Knox and Sollecito acted suspiciously in the eyes of the police and that is all it takes to get the ball rolling. It hard to stop that ball after that. The police and prosecutors that were convinced of guilt from the get go will continue be convinced of guilt. That is human nature; we all want to be right. And like in many other cases there is evidence that can be interpreted as a sign of guilt, enough to convince the court. But it does not necessarily follows from that that it in reality
is a sign of guilt. We can't be sure, because it's not a courts job to get to the truth and find out what really happened. Only a god could do that. Not human justice.
But this argument has been discussed ad nauseam and since it has a thread of its own, why not discuss it there?
The cops believed the first officer on the scene who was suspicious that the break-in was staged, so much so that they did not even bother to take photo's of the glass on top of clothes and proceeded to let Filomena contaminate the scene. The court believed the cops over the defense arguments and expert despite not even bothering to show that the glass pattern could have been done in the way that they theorized. Because the cop is right and the defense expert is wrong.
The cops believed a newspaper fax that Raffaele called the cops after they had already arrived. Because they wanted to believe it. They believed the washing machine was still running or warm when the cops arrived, so much so that Mignini questioned all of them on it in court.
The court believed their shoe expert that had already made a pretty dumb mistake over the defense expert because he had to be right and the defense expert must be wrong.
The court believed their computer experts when they claimed Raffaele was not on his computer despite the fact that these same experts managed to fry 4 computers.
The court believed Curatolo because he was a bum as his testimony confirmed a version of facts they believed to be true.
The cops believed Amanda only on the occasion that she gave a version of facts they believed to be true. The cops believed "see you later" was a confirmation of an appointment because it confirmed a version the believed to be true.
The court believed Stefanoni's claim that there had never been any contamination in her lab because they are idiots.
Stefanoni believed her cranked up machine because she had to find something.
The court believed Nara because they believed there is no reason for her to say something if it did not happen and blithely ignored the proven probability that she may have just been mistaken or confused.
The court believed the Luminol prints were of blood even after the revelation of the negative TMB test because the cops can somehow recognize the bright-shineyness of a blood response even though scientific literature says the Luminol response would have been extremely weak to the point of near undetectable faintness when the dilution of blood exceeds the limit TMB can detect.
The court believed Quintavalle helped them to discover that their own officer was wrong about asking the shopkeeper about Amanda and Raffaele when he showed them the pictures of Amanda and Raffaele.
The court believed that Meredith spent an hour or three on her bed without changing clothes, playing with her cell phone, not calling her parents, simply because it fits the version of events that they believe to be the truth.
The Supreme court believed the pillow footprint was Raffaele's because the cops had said so and they believed Amanda's sweatshirt she wore that day was missing even though it was draped across her bed.