Two prosecutors who called for Amanda Knox to spend the rest of her life in jail after claiming she killed Meredith Kercher are now themselves under investigation.
The investigating magistrates, Giuliano Mignini and Manuela Comodi, are accused of wasting public funds on commissioning a controversial video, presented to jurors, which showed images of Knox and her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito murdering the British exchange student.
Knox, 24, was dramatically cleared of the killing last October when the appeals court in Perugia accepted that pivotal DNA evidence used to convict her and Sollecito, 27, had been fatally flawed. A third person, an unemployed drifter Rudy Guede, is serving 16 years for the murder in November 2007.
Now, in a further embarrassment to Comodi and Mignini, the Umbria audit court prosecutor Agostino Chiappiniello has said he suspects the two of inappropriately spending €182,000 ($295,000) on a crude and cartoonish 20-minute video, which purports to show events leading up to and including the brutal slaying. It was shown during the original 2009 trial, after which Knox was jailed for 26 years and Sollecito for 25 years.
Both were freed last October. But they must wait until later this year to see if the Supreme Court of Cassation, Italy's highest criminal legal body, absolves them definitively of the murder charges. In February the prosecution appealed to the court to reinstate the murder convictions.
