Government of Italy v. Amanda Knox

Rome, Itally - The Government of Italy charged Amanda Knox and Faffaele Sollecito with the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, age 21. The State accused Knox with participation in the killing of her roommate whose throat had been slashed and who had been sexually assaulted.



Wikipedia article about this case:



"Amanda Marie Knox (born July 9, 1987) is an American woman whose conviction and eventual acquittal, along with Raffaele Sollecito, of the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher in Italy received widespread publicity. Rudy Guede, who denied involvement but had strong forensic evidence against him, had earlier given evidence implicating Knox and Sollecito at his separate trial for murdering Kercher, and received a reduced sentence. Knox maintained her innocence and there was criticism of the verdict because of what some experts considered an anomalous absence of forensic evidence that she had attacked Kercher in her bedroom along with Guede, as the prosecution alleged. Knox spent almost four years in prison in Italy before a second-level or appeal trial freed both her and Sollecito in October 2011. After Knox had returned to the US, the Italian Supreme Court ordered the appeal trial to be re-heard. Knox remained in the US. In January 2014, she was again found guilty, and sentenced to 28 years in prison. Both Knox and Sollecito remained free; in Italy a guilty verdict in a serious case is not regarded as a definitive conviction until the accused has exhausted the appeals process.[2][3] On March 27, 2015, Italy's highest court, the Court of Cassation, again overturned the conviction,[4] definitively ending the case.[5][6][7]



In Perugia, Knox shared a four-bedroom ground-floor apartment in a house at Via della Pergola 7, the front door did not have a spring latch and had to be closed with a key. A minute's walk from the house was Piazza Grimana, where students often gathered.[22] Her flatmates were two Italian women in their late twenties, and Kercher. Kercher and Knox moved in on 10 and 20 September 2007, respectively, meeting each other for the first time.[23] Knox was employed part-time at a bar, Le Chic, which was owned by a Congolese man, Diya Patrick Lumumba. She told flatmates that she was going to quit because he was not paying her; Lumumba denied this.[24] Kercher's English women friends saw relatively little of Knox, as she preferred to mix with Italians.[25]



The walk-out semi-basement of the house was rented by young Italian men with whom both Kercher and Knox were friendly. One, Giacomo, spent time in the girls' flat due to a shared interest in music. Returning home at 2 am one night in mid October, Knox, Kercher, Giacomo and another basement resident met Rudy Guede whom the Italians knew from playing basketball with him at Piazza Grimana.[26] Guede attached himself to the group and asked about Knox. He was invited into the basement and talked about her with the Italians. Knox and then Kercher came down to join them. At 4:30 am Kercher left, saying she was going to bed, and Knox followed her out.[27][28] Three weeks before her death Kercher went with Knox to the EuroChocolate festival. On 20 October, Kercher became romantically involved with Giacomo, after going to a nightclub with him as part of a small group which included Knox. On 25 October, Kercher and Knox went to a concert where Knox met Raffaele Sollecito, a 23-year-old student. She began spending her time at his flat, a 5-minute walk from Via della Pergola 7, which Sollecito visited several times, including having lunch there early on the day of the murder.[29]



November 1 was a public holiday and the Italians living in the house were away. Kercher was alone in the house when she returned that evening. In the late morning of November 2, 2007 Knox reported that, after spending the night with Sollecito at his apartment, she had returned to the house and found a broken window and signs of a burglary. There was blood in the bathroom and Kercher was not answering her bedroom door, which was locked. Police arrived and the door was broken open, Kercher's body, naked except for a T-shirt pulled over her shoulders, was on the floor. She had died of blood loss and suffocation caused by stab wounds to her neck.[30]



Prosecutor Mignini was assigned to the case, and spoke to Knox at the scene. According to author John Follain, Mignini thought she was concealing something. Because anyone effecting an entry through the broken window seemed unlikely, police almost immediately discounted the possibility of a burglar being the killer and Knox became the prime suspect, although she was not told this.[31][32][33][34] Over the next four days she was repeatedly interviewed and during the interrogation and statements of 5–6 November, the conduct of which is a matter of dispute, Knox incriminated herself and Lumumba. Knox, Sollecito, and Lumumba were arrested and charged with murder. Examination of the crime scene identified the fingerprints of Rudy Guede, who had fled to Germany days after the murder. Guede, Knox, and Sollecito were charged with committing the murder together. On 30 November 2007 a panel of three judges endorsed the charges, ruled there had been no burglary, and ordered Knox and Sollecito held in detention pending a trial.[35]



Prior to the murder of Kercher, Guede was said to have burgled a Perugia apartment and brandished a jackknife when confronted, although the complaint and identification did not come until he was a fugitive. On October 14, 2007, a Perugia office was broken into by smashing a window with a large stone. Property was stolen and later found in Guede's possession. On October 27, 2007, the principal of a Milan nursery school arriving for work in the morning discovered Guede in her office. Police found stolen items in his backpack, including a knife from the school kitchen. Examination of the premises found no sign of a forced entry. [36]



In an internet conversation while he was a fugitive wanted for the murder of Kercher, Guede did not mention Knox or Sollecito as being in the house on the night of the murder. The first interview of Guede by the state prosecutor was on December 7, 2007. On On March 26, 2008, Guede was questioned again by a prosecutor and for the first time put Knox at the scene of the crime. Although he was accused of committing the murder together with Knox and Sollecito, Guede was tried separately and first. As defendant he could give evidence without taking an oath, but he did not testify.[37] In his pre-trial declarations Guede said Kercher had let him in the cottage.[36][38] In their findings the judges said Guede not been guilty of any theft and there had been no break-in, further saying that Kercher would not have opened the door to Guede (who she knew to be an acquaintance of her boyfriend Giacomo, having socialized with both men in the basement).[36] The judges said that because someone with a key must have let Guede in the house, the signs of a break-in had been staged in an attempt to divert suspicion. The judges found that there was sufficient evidence for a trial of Knox and Sollecito.[39] [36] . . ."



Rudy Guede, age 20, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2008 for her murder. He admitted being in the apartment at the time of the murder but asserted that an intruder killed Kercher. Guede's palm print was found of Kerscher's pillow.

Not guilty.

Editor's Note: The Italian legal system is, of course, not like the American system but the outcome in this case is not dissimilar to what happens occasionally in habeas cases in the United States. The defense lawyers in this just would not give up in their defense of their clients. Bravo!