"I know [he was involved] because my brother confessed to me that he had killed Meredith and he asked me to hide a blood-stained knife and set of keys," he said, according to an attachment to Knox's appeal documents.

"I had everything under a little wall behind my house," he said. "I am happy to stand up in court and confirm all this and wrote to the court several times to tell them but was never questioned."

Should be easy to test his claims...

We "can't simply investigate in the course of a trial every claim that comes up," Mignini told CNN.

I sometimes wonder, is the Italian judicial system really that lousy or is there some sort of linguistic or cultural barrier there.