Angel Face_ Sex, Murder and the Inside Story of Amanda Knox - Barbie Latza Nadeau [41]
Maresca, who understood how important it was for the prosecution to prove that the alleged break-in was staged, started slowly.
“So your special training as a physicist or engineer makes you an expert at rock-throwing dynamics?” he asked slyly.
“No, I am a ballistics specialist,” Pasquali replied.
“Have you ever conducted rock-throwing experiments before?” Maresca inquired. “Why don’t we get to see the raw video of the actual experiment instead of this edited version? How many times did it take you to hit the window?”
“No, this was the only one I’ve ever done,” he stammered, clearly shaken. “It took more than a couple tries.”
“Did you try the experiment with shutters closed, like they were the night of the murder?”
“No,” Pasquali admitted.
“Did you throw the rock overhand or underhand?” Maresca continued.
“Overhand.”
“Why? Is that the logical way to throw a nine-pound rock up to a thirteen-foot-high window? Such an impact would have shattered the window, there would be glass outside on the ground, too. Why was there glass on top of the clothing? Can you answer any of those questions?”
“I have no idea,” Pasquali said before slinking off the stand.
NO ONE IN THE JURY spoke English, so the defense tried to limit the number of witnesses who required a translator, understanding that translation would dampen the effect of their testimony. Edda Mellas was the only member of Amanda’s family to take the stand. She did not want to testify, but the defense thought she would be helpful because she received a telephone call from Amanda in the early morning hours of November 2, 2007. Alas for the defense, Edda was too honest, and her testimony didn’t help her daughter. She told Mignini during questioning that, yes, she had received a call from Amanda on the morning of November 2, 2007—three calls, in fact, the first one around 4 A.M. Seattle time. Since daylight savings had not kicked in yet in the United States, that meant the call was made at noon in Perugia—well over an hour before police found Meredith’s body. The prosecutors always felt that Amanda made that call to her mother in a panic or to set in place an alibi of some sort. After all, people who live overseas, even for a few months, quickly learn to know what time it is back home. As a rule, Amanda would phone home at 3 or 4 P.M. in Perugia, just when her mother was getting up to go to work. So calling when it was the middle of the night in Seattle was a red flag and became an inconsistency in Amanda’s story that lodged in the minds of the jurors.
“She said, ‘I know it’s early’ but she called because she felt someone had been in her house,” Edda testified through a translator. “She called again, twice more. The second phone call was that people were yelling and they found a foot in the room. She was very upset. It was disturbing. I said, ‘Oh my God.’ She couldn’t understand, only the foot.” Edda was referring to Meredith’s bare foot, which the roommates had seen sticking out from under her duvet.
But this testimony contradicted her daughter’s statement on the stand just a week earlier. Back then, Amanda had testified that she did not remember making that first call to her mother.
In fact, there was a lot that Amanda couldn’t remember when she testified at the tail end of the prosecution’s case. This was the most-attended court date of the entire trial, save the verdict, and Amanda arrived with a large cold sore on her upper lip, yet she did not look particularly nervous. She was clearly ready to speak her mind. Her low alto voice was smooth and calm, but she was not sympathetic. She came across as arrogant, at times interrupting Mignini so that she could finish a random thought. She started her testimony in English, but quickly became frustrated by the stop-and-start cadence of her translator. After two hours, she switched to fluent