Italian court upholds guilty verdict
F L OR E NCE , I TA LY — An appeals court in Florence on Thursday upheld the guilty verdict against U.S. student Amanda Knox and her exboyfriend for the 2007 murder of her British roommate. Knox was sentenced to 28½ years in prison, raising the spectre of a long legal battle over her extradition if the conviction is confirmed.
Lawyers for Knox and her co-defendant, Raphael Sollecito, vowed to appeal to Italy’s highest court, a process that will take at least another year and drag out a legal saga that’s divided court watchers in three nations.
In a statement from Seattle, where she had awaited the verdict at her mother’s home, Knox said she was “frightened and saddened” by the decision. She said it was “unjust” and the result of an overzealous prosecution and narrow-minded investigation that worked to “pervert the court of justice.”
“This has gotten out of hand,” she said. “Having been found innocent before, I expected better from the Italian justice system.”
After nearly 12 hours of deliberations, the court reinstated the guilty verdicts first handed down against Knox and Sollecito in 2009 for the death of Meredith Kercher. Those verdicts had been overturned in 2011 and the pair freed from prison, but Italy’s supreme court vacated that decision and sent the case back for a third trial in Florence.
Kercher, 21, was found dead Nov. 2, 2007 in the bedroom of the apartment she and Knox shared in the central Italian city of Perugia, where both were studying. Her throat had been slashed and she was sexually assaulted.
Knox and Sollecito, who had just started dating a few days earlier, were arrested within the week. A third defendant, Rudy Guede of Ivory Coast, was convicted in a separate trial and is serving a 16-year sentence for the murder.
Knox and Sollecito maintained they were at Sollecito’s apartment the night of the murder.
Knox’s statement after the ruling appeared less aimed at persuading Italy’s top court to find her innocent in the appeal than at rallying supporters in the U.S. to resist a possible extradition request if the conviction is upheld.