@wandeljw,
wandeljw wrote:I am not an attorney. To me, it seems that the jury in Amanda's trial was presented with a great deal of "circumstantial" evidence. The general public may have a negative impression about the value of "circumstantial evidence," but such evidence plays a role in both U.S. and European legal systems.
The problem with the circumstantial evidence is not that it was circumstantial, but that it was clearly fraudulent.
No judge who was interested in justice would have even allowed such clearly fraudulent evidence to be presented in court.
In this case, the judges not only allowed it in court, they went out of their way to ensure that the defense was unable to have any of the fraudulent evidence examined by a neutral expert:
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/411007_knox09.html
In addition, even if the supposed circumstantial evidence was not clearly fraudulent, there is quite a bit of concrete evidence that Guede did the killing alone. He has a very long criminal record of breaking in through windows to rob places, while carrying a big knife, using the same MO that was used in the break in here. And Guede was the only person to leave DNA on the victim and in the victim, the only person to leave fingerprints at the murder scene (and in the victim's blood no less), and the only person to leave his DNA on the purse the victim's money was stolen from.
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