Well, firstly I'd say that due to the (absolutely proper) asymmetry inherent in the juducial process, it takes a very high degree of certainty of guilt (to the level where a "reasonable person" would have no doubts whatsoever) to assign a guilty verdict, whereas it only takes a small modicum of doubt to assign a "not guilty" verdict. Which is not the same as saying the defendants are innocent, by the way, only that they have not been proven to be guilty. The defendants, in other words, have no need whatsoever to prove their innocence, whereas the court has to prove their guilt in order to convict.
Second, there will be other things in process before the DNA experts deliver their results on the re-evaluation of the knife and bra clasp evidence. Curatolo is likely to be re-examined by then, and the court will also be studying all the other evidence from the first trial in the meantime. So it's incorrect to say that everything will be dormant until the DNA issue comes back.
I'd say that the reason Guede comes up is that it's to all intents certain that he was present at the time of the murder (his palm print in Meredith's blood was found in her room, among other things). I'd contend that since he (and his lawyer) knows he can't refute being in the room at around the time of the murder, his best (only?) possible defence is that he WAS there, but for innocent reasons, and that someone else committed the murder while he was out of the room. He then contends that he tried in vain to help the dying Meredith (but somehow didn't manage to alert anyone either by phone or out on the street). However, this cockamamie story tends to be somewhat blown apart by the undisputed fact that he was out dancing merrily in a Perugia club within a few hours of the murder, and by his flight to Germany a couple of days later.
Now, Guede opted for the fast track route, and was convicted and confirmed on appeal. But this itself raises a problem with the Italian system: if there's a crime where the allegation is one of a "joint enterprise", each defendant should be evaluated in isolation, and without prejudice from rulings on other defendants. In the UK, for example, if there was a bank robbery involving 5 suspects, and one of the five chose to plead guilty before trial, this fact would be kept from the jury until they had tried the remaining four. In the Kercher case however, we have the potentially ludicrous scenario of Guede's trial publicly concluding that he was one of a group of murderers, before the judicial process involving the only two other people who are currently connected with the murder has finished. I'd argue that this in itself is not conducive to justice, and that all the rulings involving Guede should have been kept secret until the final appeal rulings on Knox and Sollecito.
It might therefore become interesting for Guede if the Knox's/Sollecito's appeal court overturns their convictions. This would leave Guede as the lone assailant, and I'm wondering if he might therefore be able to argue that his own conviction was based on a now-discredited scenario?
