PERUGIA, Italy, (Reuters) – An Italian court cleared 24-year-old American Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend of murdering British student Meredith Kercher in 2007 and ordered them to be set free today after nearly four years in prison for a crime they always denied committing.
Seattle native Knox and Italian computer student Raffaele Sollecito, had appealed against a 2009 verdict that found them guilty of murdering 21-year-old Kercher during what prosecutors said was a drug-fuelled sexual assault four years ago.
Looking pale and tense as the sentence was read out in a packed Perugia court room, Knox was led away in tears and close to collapse by police officers.
The court quashed the conviction against Knox, who was sentenced to 26 years in jail and against Sollecito, who was sentenced to 25 years, after independent forensic investigators sharply criticised police scientific evidence, saying it was unreliable.
Kercher’s half-naked body, with more than 40 wounds and a deep gash in the throat, was found in 2007 in the apartment she shared with Knox in the Umbrian hill town of Perugia where both were studying.
Both Knox and Sollecito, 27, had consistently maintained their innocence throughout the original investigation and trial. A third man, Ivorian drug dealer Rudy Guede, was imprisoned for 16 years for his role in the murder.
The court upheld a conviction against Knox for slander, after she had falsely accused barman Patrick Lumumba of the murders. It sentenced her to three years in prison, a sentence which has now been served.
Knox’s good looks and the salacious details of the murder helped make a global media sensation of the trial, which attracted hundreds of reporters from around the world to the packed Perugia courtroom.
Expectations were running high before the verdict that Knox and Sollecito would walk free after the forensic review discredited DNA evidence used to convict them.
In a tearful address to the court earlier on Monday, Knox pleaded with the panel of two professional and six lay judges to free her, saying she was paying for a crime she did not commit.
“I did not do the things they say I did. I did not kill, rape or steal. I was not there,” she said in the fluent Italian she has learned in prison.
OUTRAGE
The appeal trial gripped attention on both sides of the Atlantic, with an outpouring of sympathy and outrage from many in the United States who saw the American as an innocent girl trapped abroad in the clutches of a medieval justice system.
A powerful lobbying campaign by her family played a big part in changing perceptions of Knox from the promiscuous “Foxy Knoxy” of early media reports and the cold-blooded, sex-obsessed “she-devil” portrayed by prosecutors.
In the process, her plight in jail dominated reporting of the trial, leaving Kercher’s family feeling the real victim of the crime had been pushed to one side.
“Mez has been almost forgotten in all of this,” her sister Stephanie told a news conference as the family emphasised that the brutality of the crime must not be forgotten.
Kercher, a Leeds University student from Coulsdon in Surrey, was on a year-long exchange programme in Perugia when she was murdered, bringing a flood of unwelcome attention to the medieval town in central Italy that her family said she loved.
The murder investigation showed she was pinned down and stabbed to death. Prosecutors said that she resisted attempts by Knox, Sollecito and Guede to involve her in an orgy.
But their case was weakened by forensic experts that dismissed police evidence that traces of DNA belonging to Knox and Kercher were found on a kitchen knife identified as the murder weapon.
The experts also said alleged traces of Sollecito’s DNA on the Briton’s bra clasp may have been contaminated.
The defence argued that no clear motive or evidence linking the defendants to the crime have emerged, and say Knox was falsely implicated in the murder by prosecutors determined to convict her regardless of the evidence.
Here is a timeline of the main events In the case:
Nov. 2, 2007 – Kercher’s body is found with a stab wound in the throat, in the apartment she shared with American student Knox in the central Italian town of Perugia.
Nov. 6 – Knox, Sollecito, and bar owner Patrick Diya Lumumba are questioned by Italian police.
Nov. 19 – Police say they are seeking a fourth suspect, named as Rudy Hermann Guede, from Ivory Coast. He is arrested the next day in the German city of Mainz. On the same day Lumumba is released without charge from prison in Rome.
April 1, 2008 – Knox, Sollecito and Guede lose their appeals to be released from prison and are told they will stay behind bars until they are charged or released.
Oct. 28, 2008 – Guede is sentenced to 30 years in jail for taking part in Kercher’s murder. His sentence is cut back to 16 years on appeal in 2009.
– Judge Paolo Micheli also orders Knox and Sollecito to stand trial on murder charges.
Jan. 16, 2009 – Trial of Knox and Sollecito begins.
Dec. 5 – A court sentences Knox to 26 years in prison and Sollecito to 25 years after they are found guilty of murdering Kercher during a drunken sex assault.
– Lawyers for Knox and Sollecito say they will appeal the sentences and Knox’s family denounces the verdict as a “failure of the Italian judicial system”.
Nov. 8, 2010 – An Italian court orders Knox to stand trial for slandering police officers during the murder investigation.
Nov. 24, 2010 – Knox and Sollecito’s appeal against their convictions starts and is adjourned. It resumes on Dec. 11.
Dec. 16 – Guede’s conviction is confirmed by Italy’s highest appeals court.
June 29, 2011 – An independent forensic report discredits police evidence used to help convict Knox.
July 25 – Two court-appointed experts, Carla Vecchiotti and Stefano Conti, tell an appeal hearing the knife thought to have been used to kill Kercher carried no trace of blood but may have been contaminated with other DNA traces.
Sept. 24 – Prosecutors ask the court to keep Knox and Sollecito behind bars for life.
Sept. 26 – Patrick Lumumba’s lawyer Carlo Pacelli calls Knox a “she-devil” and tells the appeals court she destroyed Lumumba’s image by falsely accusing him of the murder, testimony that helps prosecutors attack her credibility. Knox has said she wrongly implicated Lumumba under pressure from police.
Sept. 29 – Wrapping up the defence case, Knox’s lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova points to errors in the probe by police and urges a panel of lay and professional judges to look beyond the image of Knox created by the media and the prosecution.
Oct. 3 – Knox makes a tearful plea to be acquitted of murdering her British roommate, saying she was paying with her life for a crime she did not commit.
— Two professional and six lay judges find Knox and Sollecito not guilty of murder.
— The court upholds a conviction against Knox for slander, after she had falsely accused Lumumba of the murders. It sentenced her to three years in prison, a sentence which has now been served.
