The judge/judges.
The pro-guilt side seems to think that Massei gets it right and all the judges have agreed on this and that so they must be right. They tend to ignore obvious problems with Massei's reasoning and trust that what Massei says is correct. Reading some of the testimony I obtained, it is quite obvious he did not give the defense experts any credibility on anything, choosing to trust Stefanoni and Rinaldi on some conclusions that were not supported by common sense. Massei's dismissal of the defense expert on the staged break in and his untested theory on this is very strange. His acceptance of the witness testimony and his reasoning behind that is completely irrational.
While I agree with every point you made in this excellent post, I wanted to highlight this one in particular: I think it is a very important issue - not just in this case, but in criminal justice in particular.
It's long been known - although for obvious reasons it's virtually impossible to prove or even test - that judges (and juries) tend to have a greater or lesser disposition to favour prosecutors and prosecution experts over defence lawyers and defence experts. And there's a very simple and obvious reason for this. Judges (and juries) have an abiding tendency to believe that prosecutors and their expert witnesses are motivated by nothing more than seeking the truth, whereas conversely there is a level of belief that defence lawyers and witnesses are more likely to stretch (or even break) the truth in order to defend their client.
I strongly suspect that this tendency is even more pronounced in countries such as Italy, which have moved uneasily from the inquisitorial system to the adversarial system. I think that as a result there may be a strong vestigial belief among Italian criminal judges that if there is a dispute over interpretation of evidence between the prosecution and defence, the prosecution is more likely to be right. And I think that this is pretty much behind many of the bizarre and utterly illogical rulings in Massei's court.
It seems that while such attitudes very likely still persist in courts in countries such as the US and UK, judges in such countries are now far more aware of the real truth: prosecutors are motivated by far more than "finding the truth". After charges have been brought, prosecutors are actually motivated far more by winning the case - and thus a) meeting conviction targets, b) validating their judgement/competence in bringing charges, c) very possibly qualifying for personal/group remuneration, and/or enhancing promotional prospects. And prosecution experts are - if anything - actually much more likely to "tailor" their opinions to meet the prosecution's case. This is because prosecutors have the facility to place an awful lot of lucrative work to expert witnesses, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that prosecutors are far more likely to re-employ those witnesses that effectively support prosecution cases.
Therefore, while I believe that judges in many countries have long-since adjusted their blind confidence in prosecutors and their experts (through the experience and knowledge that prosecutors have just as much motivation to win at any costs as the defence teams do), I think it's highly likely that there's a certain reactionary section of the Italian judiciary that still naively and idealistically believe that prosecutors (and their experts) still do no more than seek the truth, wherever that might lead them. I think that in Italy this is probably caused by a combination of the unwieldy transition from inquisitorial to adversarial justice, plus quite possibly the post-fascism insularity of the Italian judiciary.
I think that Massei demonstrated in the first trial that he was clearly of the prevailing view that if defence lawyers or defence witnesses challenged the prosecution case, it was more likely than not (in the absence of any clear evidence to the contrary) that the prosecution were the "truthful" party and that the defence were simply trying to challenge for nefarious, unjustifiable or incorrect reasons. I think (and hope) that Hellmann has a more objective and balanced way of approaching disputes between prosecution and defence: he's certainly amply demonstrated this so far with his approach to the DNA evidence and the recall of Curatolo.
