In Defense of Murder

Initially Knox named her boss at a Perugia pub, Congolese Patrick Lumumba, as a suspect. He was arrested and held in jail for six weeks and released for lack of evidence. Why did she name him?
I don't think she named Lumumba in the sense that she said, "I know he was there" or "I know he was guilty." There is a real phenomenon called false confessions. And I think she fell prey to that. But it wasn't even a confession. The investigators, in Italian, aggressively began to tell her she's never getting out of here unless she tells the truth and that they were sure that Lumumba was involved, and if she didn't come clean she was going to be in a lot of trouble. Here's a girl being yelled at and threatened and she's being told that the police know that Lumumba is involved without question. So she breaks eventually. She doesn't say, "I saw him murder her." What she says is very different. She says, "I had a vision" and she starts covering her ears. She says, "I have a vision that he was there and I was with him and he went into the room and then I heard some horrible screaming … and Meredith was struggling and then I put my hands against my ears." But she's relaying a vision. She's literally making up a story she thinks the police want to hear. She didn't make up a false story. She made up a false premonition. There's a big difference.

So it wasn't that she changed her story [as police said]?
Listen, just cut away from all that stuff, and if you look to the evidence in this case, it's not there. There's the evidence against Rudy Guede, which is overwhelming. His bloody handprint is under [the victim's] pillow. His DNA is inside of her. His DNA is outside of her. His DNA is on a table far away. That crime scene is larded with the DNA of Rudy Guede. It's empty when it comes to probative evidence against Raffaele or against Amanda.

But there was a report that Sollecito's fingerprint was on Meredith's bra strap?
That's partially true. But again, as someone who has prosecuted homicide cases and defended them, I can tell you that it's not that powerful a piece of evidence. Why? Because it wasn't on the bra that they took with them to the morgue that day. It was on the metal clasp on the back of the bra. That was apparently part of the clasp that the slayer cut off of Meredith, so they think they have a smoking gun. The problem with that is they didn't find that until the fourth search of the apartment.

You were a prosecutor in New York. If you were the prosecutor in this case, what would you do?
Stop talking to the press. Better control my investigators. They are running around with wild stories.

What is Amanda's best defense?
Her best defense, I think, is probably going to be the truth. Am I saying she didn't make mistakes? No. And do I know for a fact that she's innocent? Of course not.

You believe Guede will be the primary suspect. Do you predict that he will eventually be the only suspect?
Yes, I think it's going to shake out that way eventually. Look at the type of evidence against Rudy compared to the type of evidence against Amanda and Raffaele. Even that knife that was found in Raffaele's apartment.