Amanda Knox Verdict: Murder Conviction Overturned

[High_Gravity]

Amanda Knox Verdict: Murder Conviction Overturned

An Italian court has overturned the conviction of 24-year-old American Amanda Knox. Knox was found not guilty of killing her British roommate Meredith Kercher and will be freed from jail.

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More from the Associated Press:

PERUGIA, Italy — An Italian appeals court has thrown out Amanda Knox's murder conviction and ordered the young American freed after nearly four years in prison for the death of her British roommate.

Knox collapsed in tears after the verdict was read out Monday. Her co-defendant, Raffaele Sollecito, also was cleared of killing 21-year-old Meredith Kercher in 2007.

The Kercher family looked on grimly as the verdict was read out by the judge after 11 hours of deliberations by the eight-member jury. Outside the courthouse, some of the hundreds of observers shouted "Shame, shame!"

Amanda Knox Verdict: Murder Conviction Overturned

 

[waltky]

Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, she's free at last...

Italian jury clears American Amanda Knox of murder
Mon October 3, 2011 - Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are cleared of murder; Knox's defamation conviction is upheld; The jury deliberated for more than eight hours; Amanda Knox tells the court: "I did not kill. I did not rape. I did not steal."

In a ruling read to a tension-filled courtroom, an Italian jury on Monday cleared Amanda Knox of murder and other charges, nearly four years after she was arrested on suspicion of having killed her roommate in this picturesque Italian university town. There was an audible gasp in the courtroom as the verdict was read, then an eruption of emotion, prompting the judge to call for silence. Knox herself was nearly hysterical, according to CNN's Matthew Chance, and had to be assisted out of the courtroom by two people.

The jury evidently believed Knox's impassioned final statement to the court, delivered in a voice trembling with emotion. "I am not what they say I am -- perverse, violent. ... I haven't murdered. I haven't raped. I haven't stolen," Knox said in the most important speech of her life. Her co-defendant, Raffaele Sollecito, was also cleared of involvement in Kercher's death. "We're thankful that Amanda's nightmare is over," Knox's sister, Deanna, said on the courthouse steps, getting a roar of approval from the crowd. "She suffered for four years for a crime she did not commit."

Deanna Knox thanked her sister's attorneys and "people who took the time to research the case and could see that Amanda and Raffaele were innocent," for supporting the Knox family. The same jury, however, upheld Knox's conviction on the charge of defamation against Patrick Lumumba, an early suspect in the case. She had accused club owner Lumumba of killing British college student Meredith Kercher in 2007 in Perugia.

Lumumba was arrested, but released after his alibi checked out. He later sued Knox, winning 40,000 euros ($54,000) in damages. Knox was sentenced Monday to three years on the defamation charge , but received credit for the years she has already spent behind bars, said her attorney, Carlo Dalla Vedova. "We're satisfied with the decision of the court," Dalla Vedova told CNN. "We were expecting the rectification of this mistake." He said Knox is ready to return to America, but has said she will return to Italy. "She always confirmed she was a friend of Meredith," he said.

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[jillian]

probably the right decision given that the court appointed experts totally trashed the forensics which were the only link.

 

[waltky]

She's back home...

Amanda Knox back on U.S. soil after overturned conviction
4 Oct.`11 - Amanda Knox set foot on U.S. soil Tuesday for the first time in four years following the reversal of her Italian murder conviction. She thanked supporters "for being there for me" and declared, "I'm really overwhelmed right now."

"What's important for me to say is just thank you to everyone who has believed in me, who has defended me, and supported my family," the former college student said, fighting back tears after arriving home at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport after flights from Rome and London. "My family is the most important thing to me right now, and I just want to go and be with them," she said. "Thank you for being there for me."

Knox, 24, faces a blizzard of interview requests and likely book-deal opportunities as she confronts how to resume a life interrupted by the killing of her college roommate, a British student, and a four-year legal ordeal in a foreign land. She was accompanied by family members on a flight from London after departing Rome, where she arrived in fall 2007 as a University of Washington student headed for a year of study in Perugia, Italy.

At a news conference at the Seattle airport, Knox's parents, Curt Knox and Edda Mellas, thanked supporters for standing by their daughter in the face of serious charges and lurid accusations. "This has been a very long four years,'' Curt Knox said.

Network news executives have been pursuing an interview with Knox for years, and there is a vigorous competition to be the first to get a sit-down interview on camera. Although her family's financial circumstances after the costs of her defense suggest she'd be looking for a big payday, CBS refuses to pay for interviews or related materials such as home videos, and in July, ABC said it would largely end that practice. A lucrative book contract could help pay Knox's legal bills.

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Emotional Pressure Eases as Knox Gains Freedom
October 5, 2011 - The emotional strain built steadily for years as Amanda Knox sat locked away thousands of miles from her loved ones, all the while maintaining her innocence, wondering whether anyone who mattered would ever believe her.

Knox's father, Curt, suggested that at least some of that pressure was released when she gained her freedom. "She pretty much squished the air out of us when she hugged us," he said. Curt Knox, for the time, is no longer a legal advocate, he's only a father. And, as Amanda Knox returned to her hometown of Seattle on Tuesday after being acquitted on murder charges after four years in prison, he shifted his concern to her future. "The focus simply is Amanda's well-being and getting her re-associated with just being a regular person again," he said in front of his home in West Seattle.

He said Amanda would like to return to the University of Washington at some point to finish her degree, but for now, he's apprehensive about what four years in prison may have done to his daughter, though there are no immediate plans for her to get counseling. "What's the trauma ... and when will it show up, if it even shows up?" he said. "She's a very strong girl, but it's been a tough time for her." The 24-year-old's life turned around dramatically Monday when an Italian appeals court threw out her conviction in the sexual assault and fatal stabbing of her British roommate. On Tuesday, photos of Amanda Knox crying in the courtroom after the verdict was read appeared on the front pages of newspapers in Italy, the U.S., Britain and around the world.

She was again overcome with emotion as she returned to Seattle for the first time. "Thank you for being there for me," Knox tearfully told her supporters in front of a crowd of international reporters. "I'm really overwhelmed right now," she said at a news conference minutes after she was escorted off a British Airways flight out of London. "I was looking down from the airplane, and it seemed like everything wasn't real." Knox sobbed at the news conference and held her mother's hand as her lawyer Theodore Simon said her acquittal "unmistakably announced to the world" that she was not responsible for the killing of Meredith Kercher. After her parents offered their thanks to Knox's lawyers and supporters, Knox spoke briefly, saying, "They're reminding me to speak in English, because I'm having problems with that."

"Thank you to everyone who's believed in me, who's defended me, who's supported my family," she said. "My family's the most important thing to me so I just want to go and be with them, so, thank you for being there for me," she said before she and her family left. Knox's acquittal, fueled by doubts over DNA evidence, stunned the victim's family and angered the prosecution, which insists that she was among three people who killed Kercher, 21. But for Knox's grandmother Elisabeth Huff, "it was like the weight of the world had gone." "We all are as happy as can be. I can't tell you how long we've been looking forward to this day," Huff told The Associated Press outside her home in West Seattle, a tight-knit community a few miles across Elliott Bay from downtown. Knox was studying abroad in Perugia when Kercher was killed in 2007.

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