Experts to re-examine DNA clues in fresh Knox appeal

ROME (AFP) Contradictions and illogical conclusions in the ruling that freed US student Amanda Knox from jail mean DNA evidence will be re-examined from scratch and witnesses may be re-heard, her lawyer said Tuesday.

"We were very surprised, we took it very badly," Luciano Ghirga said in reference to a damning report released by Italy's highest appeals court explaining why it quashed the acquittal of Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito.

"The new court will re-examine all the evidence from the very start, with fresh expert evaluation and possibly fresh testimony from witnesses," he said.

"We are ready to fight, to answer every challenge point by point," he added.

Knox and Sollecito -- originally sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison for sexually abusing and killing Knox's British housemate Meredith Kercher -- were acquitted by an appeals court in Perugia in 2011 after four years behind bars.

In March, however, Italy's highest appeals court overturned the acquittal and ordered a retrial in a Florence appeals court, citing "numerous examples of shortcomings, contradictions and incoherences" in the original appeal ruling.

The 74-page report accused the judges of glazing over clues and insisted the prosecution's claim from the original trial -- that the grizzly murder was the result of "an erotic game that span out of control" -- was a valid hypothesis.

"We had gone beyond that theory, proved there was nothing to it," Ghirga said, while Sollecito's lawyer Giulia Bongiorno added: "If there was an erotic game, most certainly Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox were not part of it."

The report claimed a third trace of blood found on a knife recovered from the house Knox and Kercher lived in should have been examined and was not.

It found fault with the time-scale of the murder the appeals court followed, saying that the "harrowing scream" heard by several witnesses pushed back the time of the crime from between 21:00 and 21:30 local time to two hours later.

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Experts to re-examine DNA clues in fresh Knox appeal