Amanda Knox Freed After Appeal in Italian Court

mission · Oct 3, 2011

PERUGIA, Italy — With a rapt worldwide television audience looking on, an Italian court on Monday reversed the murder conviction of 24-year-old Amanda Knox, the American student whose sensational murder trial had reverberated on both sides of the Atlantic.

The decision was read out a little before 10 p.m. to a courtroom heavy with tensions and emotions built up over the four years since the arrest of Ms. Knox and her boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, for the killing of her roommate, Meredith Kercher. Mr. Sollecito’s conviction was also overturned Monday.

As it became evident that she was being cleared of all charges, save one of defamation, a deeply stressed Ms. Knox slumped in her chair and began to sob, before falling into the arms of one of her lawyers, Maria Del Grosso.

“She’d been terrified; if I hadn’t held her up she would have crumbled,” Ms. Del Grosso said. “All she could say was thank you.”

Throughout the original trial and the appeal, prosecutors tried to paint Ms. Knox as a calculating femme fatale, a “she-devil” capable of murderous acts despite her sweet courtroom appearance and demeanor.

But their case was based mostly on circumstantial evidence. The validity of the main forensic evidence, microscopic amounts of DNA on the murder weapon and on a bra clasp, was thrown into doubt this summer by a report from independent experts that was highly critical of the police’s handling and analysis of the materials.

The joyful reaction of the defendants contrasted sharply with the looks of ashen disappointment by prosecutors and relatives of Ms. Kercher. They had flown to Perugia on Monday.

“It was a bit of a shock obviously,” her sister, Stephanie Kercher, said on Italian television after the verdict. Lyle Kercher, the brother of the slain woman, said he was “very disappointed.” He added, “In any case, no one will give us Meredith back, but we are very upset.”

The acquittal, reached by an appellate court jury of six Italian citizens and two judges, can be appealed to the Italian Supreme Court, and prosecutors indicated that they would.

The decision overturns the December 2009 ruling that sentenced Ms. Knox to 26 years in prison and Mr. Sollecito to 25 for the murder of the 21-year-old Ms. Kercher, a Briton who shared an apartment with Ms. Knox. Ms. Kercher was found stabbed in her room on Nov. 2, 2007, in what prosecutors described as a game of rough sex involving Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito that went horribly wrong. Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito were arrested a few days later.

A third defendant, Rudy Guede, 24, was also convicted of Miss Kercher’s murder in a separate trial and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. His conviction was upheld on appeal, but his sentence was shortened to 16 years. Defense lawyers in this trial tried to convince the court that Mr. Guede had been the sole perpetrator of the crime.

The families of all three were present as the verdict was read out to gasps and muted cheers from many of those assembled in the courtroom. Members of the Knox and Sollecito families celebrated in the courtroom, crying and hugging one another. Ms. Knox herself was so overcome with emotion that court officers had to support her with both arms as they hurried her away.

Tensions were high outside the courtroom, too, where hundreds of mostly young Perugia residents had gathered to await the verdict. Catcalls and whistles, and loud chants of “for shame, for shame,” suggested that even though the Perugia court found Ms. Knox innocent, at least some of the Italian public were likely to remain unconvinced.

Earlier in the day, Ms. Knox read a tearful statement in fluent Italian beseeching the court to overturn the verdict, claiming her innocence. “I did not kill,” she said. “I did not rape, I did not steal. I was not there. I want to go back home. I want to go back to my life. I don’t want to be punished. I don’t want my life and my future to be taken away for something I didn’t do.”

After the verdict, Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito were returned to their respective prisons but left a short time later. Carlo Dalla Vedova, one of her lawyers, said Ms. Knox would spend the night with her family and could leave Italy as early as Tuesday. “As long as all the administrative procedures have been cleared, she could return to Seattle immediately,” he said.

“We’re thankful Amanda’s nightmare is over,” Ms. Knox’s sister, Deanna, read in a statement after the verdict. “We’re thankful to the court to have the courage to acknowledge the truth and overturn the conviction, and grateful for the support we have received from all over the world.” Mr. Sollecito’s father, who had been present at every hearing, said simply, “I finally have my son back.”

The elation at the acquittal extended to Ms. Knox’s circle of friends and supporters, who had rented a suite at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel in Seattle to watch the broadcast of the verdict. They cried with joy as the news was read shortly before 4 p.m. Eastern time.

“There was no way she did this,” said John Lange, Ms. Knox’s theater teacher at Seattle Preparatory, a Jesuit high school. “She never did anything to hurt anyone. She was not conniving. She was not mean-spirited.”

All three defendants in the trial were young, fresh-looking students in the picturesque central Italian city of Perugia, a fact that largely ignited the media hype that surrounded the case from the start. The unprecedented international attention paid to the trial was further fueled by looming questions about the means and motives of the accused.

The appeal, which began last November, was dominated by the re-examination of the DNA evidence.

Court-appointed experts said that the DNA had been collected in a way that could have allowed for contamination, and that the genetic information on two main pieces of evidence could not be matched to the defendants with certainty.

In their closing arguments, prosecutors dismissed the work of the experts, calling them inept and inexperienced. But Giulia Bongiorno, one of Mr. Sollecito’s lawyers, said Monday that the review of the DNA evidence had been critical in proving her client’s innocence. “It cast the case in a new light,” she said.

The appeals court upheld Ms. Knox’s conviction on a charge of slander for accusing a bar owner, Diya Lumumba, who goes by the name Patrick, of committing the murder. The court set the sentence for that conviction at three years — meaning time served — and a $29,000 fine.

Monday’s verdict is unlikely to quash the hard feelings the case stirred up regarding the role of the media, both local and international, which have been accused of excessive — and often biased — coverage of the case.

The Italian justice system has also come under close scrutiny, and in the next few days there is likely to be discussion of the pitfalls of a legal system that seems to have wrongly kept two young people in prison for four years.

Many American news media outlets, which were largely sympathetic to the Knox family in their coverage, frequently portrayed the American as having been caught up in what was sometimes described as a medieval or barbaric legal system.

Italian legal experts dismissed such accusations. The Knox case, if anything, exemplified the guarantees implicit in the judicial system, “because the appeals process evaluates both procedural questions and can reopen the investigative phase, which is what happened here,” said Maurizio Bellacosa, a defense lawyer and professor of penal law at the Luiss University in Rome. “It is a guarantee for defendants.”

Giuliano Mignini, the prosecutor who led the murder investigation, said Monday that he would appeal the sentence to Italy’s Supreme Court. The judge will have 90 days to write a report on the court’s conclusions, and parties then have 45 days to file an appeal. The court usually takes a year to hear a case.

Should they decide to overturn the acquittal, Ms. Knox would be tried — even in absentia — in a second appeals court, and if that court upheld the conviction it would return to the Supreme Court.

Only when a final conviction was reached could Italy start extradition procedures against her.

Mr. Mignini said the slander charge remained proof of Ms. Knox’s guilt. “This verdict is something that I do not agree with,” he said.
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Joe Burger · Oct 7, 2011

She could be guilty of murder after all... only she knows.

mission · Oct 9, 2011

Part 1 blocked in Canada

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mission · Oct 9, 2011

mission · Oct 9, 2011

mission · Oct 9, 2011

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