PERUGIA, Italy, Sept. 5 (UPI) -- Italian police defended their forensic methods as the appeal of the murder conviction of Amanda Knox and her former Italian boyfriend resumed.
The police rejected allegations by an investigative panel of experts that their methods were badly flawed and contaminated key evidence, ABC News reported Monday.
Prosecutors were expected to cross-examine DNA experts about their contention that evidence used to convict Knox in Meredith Kercher's death was seriously flawed, Adnkronos International reported.
The hearing resumed a day after the family of British exchange student Kercher , killed while studying in Italy, said they don't want the woman to be forgotten nor her death to be in vain.
Stephanie Kercher said she wrote to the family's lawyers in Italy, expressing "anxiety and trouble" about an appeal by two of the convicted killers of her sister, Meredith, and questions raised about DNA evidence in the case, The Daily Telegraph reported.
Knox, convicted along with her ex-boyfriend and another man of killing Kercher, was in a Perugia, Italy, courtroom Monday to appeal her 2009 conviction.
Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito are appealing their 26- and 25-year prison sentences in the stabbing death of Kercher. Ivory Coast immigrant Rudy Guede was tried separately and is serving a 16-year sentence.
Stephanie Kercher's letter read, "It is extremely difficult to understand how the results, which were obtained with great care and presented in the first trial as valid, could now be regarded as irrelevant."
"The defense seems to be focusing on these DNA aspects," the letter said, "but we want, for a moment to remember who this case is about: My sister, a daughter brutally taken away four years ago and a day does not pass when we do not think about her ... ."
The court is expected to rule on the appeal by the end of September.
Knox and Sollecito maintain their innocence, saying they were wrongfully convicted because of faulty forensic evidence.
Expert witnesses Carla Vecchiotti and Stefano Conti from Rome's La Sapienza University testified in July that DNA evidence was not reliable. They said no trace of blood was found on the knife identified as the murder weapon.
