Raffaele Sollecito was a +1 on the trial that decided his very fate. The ridiculous dehumanization of a wonderful young person is what the fifth episode of The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox wishes to counter by dedicating the whole episode to his story. But what’s absolutely admirable about this episode is that it doesn’t just do so as a half-hearted gesture. Raffaele’s story is treated with just as much tenderness and fairness as that of the titular character. Because despite being wrongfully convicted of the same crime, Raffaele and Amanda’s lives, experiences, and the effect of such an unforeseeable turn of fate on the two of them have been very different.
Spoiler Alert
Raffaele Sollecito was branded a monster
We meet Raffaele at a very defining moment of his life. Whether we recognize them or not, we all had them back when we were kids. For little Raffaele, that moment was when his father, Francesco, gave up on his marriage. An empathetic child’s sweet gesture of giving his wretched mom a lollypop established not just the mother-son dynamic, but it also convinced Raffaele that his true purpose was in being there for people. So Raffaele grew up a giver; a sweet, unselfish-to-a-fault guy, who bore the unfair burden of being emotionally exploited by his depressed mother. That’s the last guy the police should’ve grilled so rough on the night of the interrogation after Meredith’s murder. But the same way Amanda was being heckled and abused by the police, the officers had Raffaele in a chokehold in another room as well. They twisted everything that Amanda and Raffaele said not only to legitimize their narrative, but they also found ways to use them against each other. Because Amanda mentioned that Raffaele’s dad called him most nights, the police took the liberty to lie to Raffaele and claim that Amanda said that he’d taken a call from his dad on the night of Meredith’s murder. Now, Raffaele did have a nightly call routine with his dad. So it understandably threw him off to hear that from the police. They basically made him gaslight himself into admitting that maybe it was possible he was remembering things wrong. All they really wanted from him was his admission that Amanda had left his house on that fateful night. And between all the yelling and the namecalling, a terrified Raffaele gave them what they wanted. But the police were only getting started. They had Amanda after Raffaele’s supposed “statement,” but they were still greedy for more. They took one look at Raffaele’s sneakers, and without even a close scrutiny, claimed that his shoes matched the bloody footprints they’d found at the crime scene. In a flicker, Raffaele went from being invisible to being a primary suspect in a murder he knew nothing about. He could never have been prepared to face what was waiting for him in the Terni prison. Infested with rapists and pedophiles, it’s worse than hell for someone as good and sensitive as Raffaele. But sensitivity and strength aren’t mutually exclusive. And lucky for his family, Raffaele has the strength to hold his breath and wait for justice and truth to prevail. And it’s not like they don’t try to break him. They even bribe his first cellmate to take a crack at getting him to confess to all sorts of insane stories. Once Ginevra saw Raffaele as a puppet at Amanda’s constant beck and call, that narrative stuck. That’s what they kept trying to get Raffaele to admit. But Raffaele and Amanda stuck by each other. Even when his father and his cop sister, Vanessa, advised him to break his ties with Amanda, Raffaele never even considered abandoning her. When they met on the first day of the trial and made plans to go to Gubbio once this was all over, both Amanda and Raffaele wished for the best outcome for themselves and each other. But Raffaele’s need to protect Amanda has a whole lot to do with the role he’s been playing ever since he was a kid. All through the separation, the divorce, and his mother’s alcoholism, Raffaele was the only one there for her. It’s not that he didn’t see the problem with it. But the way he saw it is a very fundamental truth of mankind. Everyone needs someone to save them at some point. And some people need a lot of help. Raffaele’s mom was one of those people. But just like Raffaele didn’t abandon her even at his father and sister’s request, he doesn’t want to leave Amanda in a hellhole to save his own neck now. And it’s not like Francesco is too big on listening to sound advice either. It’s understandable that he is absolutely fuming over the way the police are manipulating the press. He’s just figured out that the police have cunningly publicized a picture of the bathroom that looks a lot bloodier than it really was because of a chemical reaction to a substance that’s used in forensics. Even though Vanessa and their attorneys have the good sense to know that the police can really hurt their case if they speak up, Francesco can hardly be contained. As a police officer herself, Vanessa’s career is also on the line over this. But you can’t really blame Francesco for screaming the truth to drown out the noise of the lies. He even goes on national TV to present his very well-grounded findings that prove that his son’s sneakers couldn’t be more different from the bloody shoe prints. But that does what everyone told him it would. The police strike back with much more ferocity and a very disgusting attack on Raffaele’s image. Apparently, they’ve found his DNA on Meredith’s bra. That should tell Raffaele and his family all they should expect in the trial. Her professional competence notwithstanding, the forensics scientist Dr. Ippolito sure knows how to overwhelm a court with her very long job title. Coupled with her “tests and findings” and Mignini’s co-prosecutor’s utterly offensive theatrics with a bra she’s brought, it doesn’t take a whole lot of effort to convince the jury that Raffaele is some kind of a sex freak and a monster who tortured an innocent girl. Plus, there’s the supposed murder weapon. It’s not looking very good for Raffaele.
Why did the prosecutors not provide the defense with the DNA test reports?
What the police thought of Raffaele was set in stone from the moment they took his sneakers into evidence. From that point, he’s been treated like a twisted maniac. After Amanda had given her statement, the police took Raffaele back to his place to look through his stuff. You can hardly expect Officer Bruno to know much about Japanese manga. As a huge anime and manga fan, and an artist himself, Raffaele was bound to have some things in his room that’d shock people who don’t get that interest. The gory depiction of sexual fantasies in one of Raffaele’s collectibles was misinterpreted by Bruno as a sick freak’s shameful interest. Yeah, they were that stupid. If they could hold Raffaele’s collection of mini pocket knives against him and pick one of his kitchen knives to present in court as the murder weapon, they could do everything nonsensical imaginable. But the poor job they’re doing of investigating a murder only makes it easy for Raffaele’s attorney Giulia to question the investigators’ competence in court. They said Meredith’s murder weapon came from Raffaele’s kitchen because there were traces of Meredith, Raffaele, and Amanda’s DNA on that knife. And no matter how highly the investigative officer may esteem his intuition when Giulia asks him why he thought that that knife was the murder weapon, even he knew it was absolutely random. The way he even handled the supposed “murder weapon” thereon was absolutely atrocious too. And since he can’t go ahead and tell a verifiable lie under oath, the investigator is forced to take accountability for his gross mishandling of the evidence. He picked up a stray bag, put the knife in it, stuck it in his bag, and then sent it to forensics in a dirty cardboard box. Traces of Meredith’s DNA could’ve gotten on it by contamination at any point in between. So the prosecution and the police are answerable for their thin logic behind taking the DNA analysis as gospel truth. But Mignini doesn’t really care about playing fair, does he? If he did, he wouldn’t have purposely withheld the DNA analysis from Amanda and Raffaele’s defense teams for months. He knows just how janky the reports are. And since he holds enough power to claim he’s following protocol when Amanda’s attorney desperately begs the court to get him to hand it over, I doubt that he feels any pressure over it. The only people feeling pressure are the ones who care about Amanda and Raffaele. The two of them have found some comfort within themselves through their letters. But Raffaele’s family doesn’t think that it’s a good idea for him to be close to Amanda considering her image outside is that of an evil witch. The police prove his fears right when the newspaper sensationalize the closeness between two murder suspects. But even through all that, Raffaele is very adamantly himself. He’s seen his father’s choice of leaving his mother as the one thing that destroyed multiple lives. The one side he’s never really considered is his father’s. Francesco left an unhappy marriage to save himself. But to Raffaele, Francesco abandoned his wife because her emotions were inconvenient for him. So he’s tried to be very unlike his father. And the one thing he can never do is leave people knowing they’re not going to be okay.
Why were Amanda and Raffaele convicted of Meredith’s murder?
Communication can be a tricky thing even in regular relationships. So you can only imagine how often intentions and emotions can be misunderstood between two people exchanging letters from their prison cells. There inevitably comes a point in Amanda’s time in prison where she doesn’t have the headspace to keep a whole relationship going with Raffaele. She wants to be friends. But Raffaele got too attached to the idea of being with Amanda once this was all over. So the rejection that made all the sense for Amanda came as a huge blow to him. It’s around this time that Vanessa loses her job too. But all she can really care about is the condition her brother is in. It pains her to see him so heartbroken over being dumped by Amanda that he can’t even get himself to care about the fact that he might be convicted. But that’s just who Raffaele is. He was made for far sweeter, far softer things than this. It’s here that some of his mother’s emotional tendencies are mirrored in his quiet desperation to be loved and needed. The weirdest game of fate once made his sister push him to go to college in Perugia. At that time, all he was doing was looking after their mom. So it made sense for his dad and sister to worry for his future. So off he went to Perugia; looking for education, an actual life of his own, and a girl like the ones in his manga. Amanda was straight out of the romance books for him, and he fell right away. But this is his second heartbreak. The first one was when he got the call about his mother’s death.
The four months that court went into recess for, was bound to be excruciating for Raffaele and Amanda. But for Raffaele, the break-up has made everything a whole lot worse. The only time he can actually really think about the case is when he prays for himself, for Amanda, the lawyers on both sides, the judges, and the jurors. What he probably really prays for is for everyone to do the right thing. But the only people doing anything right are the defense lawyers. Amanda’s lawyer takes a rightful dig at Dr. Ippolito’s uncertified lab and the iffy procedure she followed to get the DNA analysis. They found no trace of blood on Raffaele’s knife. And the minor traces of Meredith’s DNA, which they only found because Dr. Ippolito had manually overridden the machine, could’ve been from contamination. Even co-prosecutor Comodi’s theory about Meredith’s bra having been ripped and cut apart by the accused people–Amanda, Raffaele, and Rudy–is torn to shreds by Giulia’s simple logic. It’s awkward for Dr. Ippolito to be made to look like a babbling fool. But she has to admit that a piece of the bra that they had originally found in one place and then picked up in another place could be too contaminated to be considered evidence. The fabric couldn’t have moved by itself. It could’ve been dragged there by someone’s shoe, which would both contaminate it and crush the hook, making it look like it had been ripped apart. But Dr. Ippolito knows what she is doing. She is here to support the prosecution’s false narrative and win them the case. Her answer doesn’t even show an ounce of sincerity, but it does make people laugh. They all know that they’ve come to watch two young people’s lives get destroyed. All they want is the show that they came for. And that’s something that Mignini specializes in. He gives the court and the people a horrifying and wildly fictitious story as his closing argument. By this point, getting the DNA analysis from Mignini wasn’t going to change anything. The police, the jury, and the entirety of Italy made up their minds about Amanda and Raffaele. Nobody could’ve done anything differently for a different outcome.
It’s a complete betrayal of justice when Amanda and Raffaele get long sentences in the ending of the fifth episode. But that hardly means that it’s over. They can and will go to appellate court. They were never going to win this case. Their lawyers couldn’t ever get the judge’s permission to do an independent review of the DNA analysis. Everyone wanted Amanda and Raffaele locked away. The only sensible person in the crowd is ironically very close to the victim. In the press conference, Meredith’s sister has nothing to celebrate. She mourns the death of her sister, yes. But she doesn’t relish the end of two young lives either. She might’ve also had her doubts about the police’s story. But it will still be a long, painful wait till they get a crumb of the truth. The truth of that night and what Amanda and Raffaele really talked about after watching Amelie and eating dinner is far from Mignini’s awful story and the prosecution’s flashy recreation of the murder. On that night, they talked about his mom and how she died from a broken heart when his dad was to be remarried. Raffaele was only starting to forgive himself for wanting a life. Being locked up is the last thing he deserved.
