Italy appeals court clears Knox of murder

ALESSANDRA RIZZO

COLLEEN BARRY

Asso­ci­ated Press

PERUGIA, Italy — Amanda Knox left prison Mon­day, a free woman for the first time in four years, after an Ital­ian appeals court threw out the young American’s mur­der con­vic­tion in the sex­ual assault and stab­bing death of her British roommate.

Knox, 24, col­lapsed in tears after the ver­dict was read, her lawyers drap­ing their arms around her in sup­port. Her co-defendant and for­mer boyfriend, Ital­ian Raf­faele Sol­lecito, also was cleared of killing 21-year-old Mered­ith Kercher in 2007.

“We’re thank­ful that Amanda’s night­mare is over,” her younger sis­ter, Deanna Knox, told reporters out­side the cour­t­house. “She suf­fered for four years for a crime she did not commit.”

The eight-member jury acquit­ted both Knox and Sol­lecito of mur­der after a court-ordered review of the DNA evi­dence cast seri­ous doubts over the main DNA evi­dence link­ing the two to the crime.

While the court won’t release its rea­sons for clear­ing the two for weeks, the dis­cred­it­ing of the DNA evi­dence was believed to have been the fatal blow to the prosecution’s case in the absence of a clear motive.

The jury had two options to acquit: deter­min­ing there wasn’t enough evi­dence to uphold the con­vic­tion or that the pair sim­ply didn’t com­mit the crime. The jury deter­mined the lat­ter, clear­ing Knox and Sol­lecito completely.

Even if pros­e­cu­tors appeal the acquit­tal to Italy’s high­est court, noth­ing in Ital­ian law would pre­vent her from return­ing home to Seat­tle. An Ital­ian law­maker who has cham­pi­oned her case, Rocco Girlanda, said she was due to fly out Tues­day from Rome.

About 90 min­utes after the ver­dict was handed down a black Mer­cedes car­ry­ing Knox was seen leav­ing the prison.

The jury upheld Knox’s con­vic­tion on a charge of slan­der for accus­ing bar owner Diya “Patrick” Lumumba of car­ry­ing out the killing. But he set the sen­tence at three years, mean­ing for time served. Knox has been in prison since Nov. 6, 2007, five days after the murder.

The Kercher fam­ily looked on grimly and a bit dazed as the ver­dict was read out by the judge after 11 hours of delib­er­a­tions. Out­side the cour­t­house, some of the hun­dreds of observers shouted, “Shame! Shame!”

“We respect the deci­sion of the judges but we do not under­stand how the deci­sion of the first trial could be so rad­i­cally over­turned,” the Kerchers said in a state­ment. “We still trust the Ital­ian jus­tice sys­tem and hope that the truth will even­tu­ally emerge.”

The victim’s sis­ter, Stephanie Kercher, who was in Peru­gia with her mother and brother for the ver­dict, lamented that Mered­ith “has been nearly forgotten.”

Inside the fres­coed court­room, Knox’s par­ents, who have reg­u­larly trav­eled from their home in Seat­tle to Peru­gia to visit her over the past four years, hugged their lawyers and cried with joy. Knox her­self was so over­whelmed with tears that two guards tugged on her arms to escort her out of the courtroom.

One of Knox’s lawyers, Carlo della Vedova said he didn’t know when Knox would leave the coun­try. Knox needed to renew her pass­port, but it’s not clear how quickly that could be done or if the paper­work was already completed.

The trial has cap­ti­vated audi­ences world­wide. Knox and Sol­lecito, who had just begun dat­ing, were con­victed of mur­der­ing Kercher in what the lower court said began as a drug-fueled sex­ual assault.

Also con­victed in sep­a­rate pro­ceed­ings was Rudy Her­mann Guede, a small-time drug dealer and drifter who spent most of his life in Italy after arriv­ing here from his native Ivory Coast. Guede was con­victed in a sep­a­rate fast-track pro­ce­dure and saw his sen­tence cut to 16 years in his final appeal.

Lawyers for Knox and Sol­lecito charged that Guede was the sole killer, but the pros­e­cu­tion and a lawyer for the Kercher fam­ily said bruises and a lack of defen­sive wounds on Kercher’s body prove there was more than one aggres­sor hold­ing her down.

After the ver­dict, the U.S. State Depart­ment said it appre­ci­ated the “care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion” the Ital­ian jus­tice sys­tem gave to the case. “Our embassy in Rome will con­tinue to pro­vide appro­pri­ate con­sular assis­tance to Ms. Knox and her fam­ily,” spokes­woman Vic­to­ria Nuland said after the verdict.

In Seat­tle, about a dozen Knox sup­port­ers were overjoyed.

“She’s free!” and “We did it!” they shouted at a hotel where they watched the court pro­ceed­ings on TV.

Ear­lier Mon­day, Knox tear­fully told the court in flu­ent Ital­ian that she did not kill the woman who shared an apart­ment with her when they were both stu­dents in Peru­gia. Knox fre­quently paused for breath as she spoke to the eight mem­bers of the jury in a packed court­room, but man­aged to main­tain her com­po­sure dur­ing the 10-minute address.

“I’ve lost a friend in the worst, most bru­tal, most inex­plic­a­ble way pos­si­ble,” she said. “I’m pay­ing with my life for things that I didn’t do.”

Knox and Sol­lecito were con­victed of sex­u­ally assault­ing and mur­der­ing Kercher, who was stabbed to death in her bed­room. Knox was sen­tenced to 26 years in prison, Sol­lecito to 25.

“I never hurt any­one, never in my life,” Sol­lecito said Mon­day in his own speech to the jury.

The prosecution’s case was set back dur­ing the appeal when two court-ordered inde­pen­dent experts reviewed the DNA evi­dence that had been used to link the two to the crime dur­ing the first trial.

From the start, the weak point in the prosecution’s case was the lack of motive along with unre­li­able and at times con­tra­dic­tory eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mony. There­fore, much depended on the sci­en­tific evi­dence gath­ered by investigators.

Pros­e­cu­tors main­tain that Knox’s DNA was found on the han­dle of a kitchen knife believed to be the mur­der weapon, and that Kercher’s DNA was found on the blade. They said Sollecito’s DNA was on the clasp of Kercher’s bra as part of a mix of evi­dence that also included the victim’s genetic profile.

But the inde­pen­dent review — ordered at the request of the defense, which had always dis­puted those find­ings — reached a dif­fer­ent conclusion.

The two experts found that police con­duct­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion had made glar­ing errors in evidence-collecting and that below-standard test­ing and pos­si­ble con­t­a­m­i­na­tion raised doubts over the attri­bu­tion of DNA traces, both on the blade and on the bra clasp, which was col­lected from the crime scene 46 days after the murder.

The review was cru­cial in the case because no motive has emerged and wit­ness tes­ti­mony was contradictory.

Pros­e­cu­tors spent sev­eral hear­ings and a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of their clos­ing argu­ments try­ing to refute the review, attack­ing the experts as unqual­i­fied, stand­ing by their orig­i­nal con­clu­sions and defend­ing the work of foren­sic police.

They also pointed to what a pros­e­cu­tor, Manuela Comodi, called “gigan­tic, rock-solid cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence” that con­tributed to the orig­i­nal convictions.

What led the appeals court to reach its deci­sion will be explained when the court issues the manda­tory writ­ten moti­va­tion — due within 90 days of the verdict.

Hun­dreds of eager observers gath­ered out­side the cour­t­house ahead of the announce­ment, join­ing tele­vi­sion vans that have been camped out for more than a week. One hun­dred reporters were allowed into the sub­ter­ranean courtroom.

Observers lined the street lead­ing to the cour­t­house, tak­ing pic­tures as the two vans car­ry­ing Knox and Sol­lecito from prison to court passed by.

As the ver­dict was broad­cast live, hun­dreds of reporters and cam­era crews filled the court­room before Knox’s address, while police out­side cor­doned off the entrance.

Knox told the court in her final appeal that she has always wanted jus­tice for Kercher.

“She had her bed­room next to mine. She was killed in our own apart­ment. If I had been there that night, I would be dead,” Knox said. “But I was not there.”

“I did not kill. I did not rape. I did not steal. I wasn’t there,” she said.

Sol­lecito was anx­ious as he addressed the court, shift­ing as he spoke and stop­ping to sip water. He said the time before the mur­der had been a happy one for him. He was close to pre­sent­ing his the­sis to grad­u­ate from uni­ver­sity and had just met Knox. They had planned to spend that week­end together “in ten­der­ness and cud­dles,” he said.

At the end of his 17-minute address, Sol­lecito took off a white rub­ber bracelet embla­zoned with “Free Amanda and Raf­faele” that he said he has been wear­ing for four years.

“I have never taken it off. Many emo­tions are con­cen­trated in this bracelet,” he said. “Now I want to pay homage to the court. The moment to take it off has arrived.”

Posted by AP News on Oct 3 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.