So basically you are saying that the prosecution gives as little as they can and if the defense experts don't request information withing a relatively short period of time that's just too bad for the defendants.
The prosecution deposits evidence at the clerk's office, and the evidence in this investigation does not consist in DNA findings on the knife and bra claps, but in many other things.
In the Italian system there are basically two kinds of evidence collected over the investigation. The ones collected with a procedure called "incidente probatorio", and the ones that are "documents and witnsses".
Basically all kinds of evidence in the Italian system are considered 'testimonies', they always include witnesses, they are not factual elements but always human testimony, human report about facts. A piece of documentation (like a photo) is always together with some human witness.
But all the evidence of the second kind, which are witness and documents without "incidnte probatorio", are not a documentation that can be brought into the trial as it is; they have no probative value as long as they are files during the investigation, as long as they are within the prosecution file. In order to exist, they must be "formed" (built, discussed, put together) in the courtroom.
Formare is an Italian verb with a meaning similar to "build".
Some documentation can't be entered: you can't, for example, enter a video recording or transcript or minutes of an interrogation in a trial. You can't enter documents from police investigations and so on.
The evidence of the second kind, called "incidente probatorio", instead, they are events of the investigaion which have a value, which "exist" for the judge, and they become part of the trial documents, as if they were court hearings. As if they were transcripts of debates between prosecution and defence, court witnesses, etc.
The problem here is not the relatively short period of time (which anyway was nine months), here the point is the status of "incidente probatorio" of the investigations performed by Stefanoni. They are intended to be events that will remain as they are. They took place before the court hearings. The time for taking part to such events is when the defence is summoned, which usually happend before the preliminary hearing.
If the defense was incapacitated to do necessary request (they didn't know, were not told, didn't have the means etc) they can be allowed to do that later.
Here, they were allowed to get further documentation even if they requested it very late (July 2009), and to the wrong people.
Bongiorno and Ghirga requested some documentation at the preliminary hearing. But the defence experts were offered access to the laboratory documentation before, that is before Stefanoni's technical report was deposited.
The defence actually "waited" for the Stefanoni's technical report to be issued, before accessing information, and this is what they shouldn't have done. The Stafanoni's technical report is the result of an "incidente probatorio" procedure and you can't read it before, and then request to access the information after.
