He also claims that prosecutors routinely present evidence as proof. "Recently we've followed the case of Romulus Mailat, a young man accused of raping and murdering a woman in Rome," Malini says. "The prosecutors [said] the defendant had blood under his fingernails, assuming it was the victim's. Oddly enough, they didn't think of taking a DNA test. The defendant's lawyer had to ask for it. When finally the test was taken, the prosecutors claimed it was unreliable because the blood had been reportedly altered by water, and they refused to show the results." Mailat was convicted.
Legal experts also share concerns about Italy's bar for admissibility. Il Giornale, a conservative newspaper, for instance, recently published an interview with Marco Morin, a Venice-based firearms expert who declared he no longer wanted to work in Italian courts. "In the United States, federal judges must study a 637-page manual in order to be able to evaluate [forensic] evidence," he told the newspaper. "Here, they accept everything without questioning, as long as it comes from the institutional laboratory."
