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Tag: Raffaele Sollecito

  • Amanda Knox Now Working As A Reporter

    Amanda Knox Now Working As A Reporter

    Amanda Knox made headlines after she was convicted for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher back in 2007. Now, it seems Knox has put her past behind and is now working as a freelance writer for the West Seattle Herald. “We approached her originally to give her the opportunity of a normal life,” said Patrick Robinson, her editor at the paper. “We simply asked her as we would ask anyone of that age and stage, if they would be interested in writing for us as a qualified writer of that scale and this level of journalism.”

    Knox, 27, has been working for the paper for a few months now. Her pieces mostly deal with human interest stories and the local theater scene. When she started out with her new job, her articles were published under a pseudonym but she has since reverted to using her real name in the byline.

    — The Daily Telegraph (@dailytelegraph) November 6, 2014

    Back in 2007, Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were found guilty of Kercher’s murder. Kercher and Knox were roommates in Italy when they took part in a student abroad program. Two years later she was acquitted on appeal and was released after serving four years in an Italian prison.

    Knox’s legal troubles aren’t over though. In January, the Italian court overturned the acquittal. She was convicted of Kercher’s murder during the retrial and is sentenced to 28 and a half years in prison. There’s no news yet if Knox will be extradited, but she is expected to appeal the verdict.

    — Hastings (@goHastings) April 30, 2013

    Last year, Knox released her memoir called Waiting to Be Heard and the details surrounding the case became fodder for film adaptations including the Lifetime movie Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy as well as the upcoming Michael Winterbottom film The Face of an Angel which stars Cara Devlevingne in a role inspired by Knox.

  • Amanda Knox Allegedly Connected To Known Cocaine Dealer

    Amanda Knox is preparing for her last ditch effort at an appeal in Italy’s highest appeals court. She will try to overturn her conviction of murdering her roommate Meredith Kercher. That is enough for anyone to be anxious about, but now it seems she has a few other problems to deal with.

    It was revealed recently that Amanda Knox allegedly had a sexual relationship with a cocaine dealer who allegedly repeatedly sold drugs to a man named Luciano who allegedly stabbed his brother 16 times with a kitchen knife. This allegedly occurred a year before Meredith Kercher was murdered. Amanda Knox’s alleged connections to the cocaine dealer, who investigators refer to as “F”, weren’t mentioned in her murder trial.

    This “F” was reportedly a psychology student from Rome. It is said that he met Amanda Knox on a train from Milan to Florence and shared a joint with her. The two then developed a relationship that investigators deemed to be of a “supposedly sexual nature”. His phone number was found in her phone and records showed that the two were in contact often.

    It was assumed that “F” also sold drugs to Amanda Knox.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl7IlE4PjLE

    However, it seems that this new information may not have any effect on Amanda Knox.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vOKhl5yHMQ

    Giuliano Mignini, the magistrate in charge of the investigation into Meredith Kercher’s murder, said Wednesday that he considered the new revelations irrelevant to Amanda Knox’s case.

    He said of Amanda Knox’s case, “We have three sentences, one of which is definite and we are at the final stages of the process – this will not change anything.”

    Mignini added that new evidence wouldn’t even be admitted into Amanda Knox‘s appeal hearing.

    Basically, when it comes to the conviction of Amanda Knox, this new information really doesn’t matter when the facts are examined that relate to the murder of Meredith Kercher.

    “We ran down many leads and at the end we were left with three people who left traces in the house.” Mignini said.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC2Ci93mKEg

    The appeal that Amanda Knox has made for her innocence will be over soon. Only time will tell if she will face punishment or freedom.

    Image via YouTube

  • Amanda Knox Ex-Boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, Reveals Weakness of Alibi

    Amanda Knox’s former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, is casting doubt on the alibi which has become the cornerstone of the defense for him and Knox. In a press conference today, he revealed his defense strategy which revolves around weaknesses in the verdict which convicted him. One of those weaknesses is the alibi of Amanda Knox.

    According to AFP, Sollecito has “always believed, and still believe, that Amanda Marie Knox is innocent”, but his defense in this latest appeal will revolve around a text message Knox sent which puts a chink in the armor of her Alibi.

    “This text message, according to the court’s own ruling, was not sent from his house. Therefore the pair were not together,” Sollecito’s lawyer Giulia Bongiorno explained. Sollecito refused to speculate or offer a solution as to where Knox may have been at the time.

    In his own words, “My name is Raffaele Sollecito, not Amanda Marie Knox, I have to respond as Raffaele Sollecito,” Sollecito said according to the Associated Press. Back in February, Sollecito also distanced himself from Knox. “I don’t want to be punished for, nor have to continue to justify, those things that regard you and not me,” he said.

    CNN reported that the continuing strategy for Sollecito has been to maintain distance from him and Knox. The past seven years it had been for them to stick together, but in the words of Bongiorno, “they are not Siamese twins — one body with two heads.”

    “It’s imperative that the Italian courts consider Raffaele’s case separate from Amanda’s case,” John Kelly, another lawyer for Sollecito explianed, “By necessity, he has to distance himself and his case from Amanda and her case.”

    Image via Anderson, YouTube.

  • Amanda Knox: Boyfriend Questions Her Behavior

    Could it be that Raffaele Sollecito is merely covering his proverbial butt, or could he finally be coming clean about the peculiar actions of his ex-girlfriend, Amanda Knox?

    Sollecito has said to many news outlets that he has unanswered questions about Amanda Knox’s behavior after the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher in 2007.

    When he was interviewed on Italian television, Sollecito commented that Knox left his apartment the morning before Kercher’s body was found, and later when she returned, she seemed ‘very agitated’. He recalls that she mentioned that her front door had been broken into and that she had found spots of blood in the bathroom.

    ‘Certainly I asked her questions,’ Sollecito said in the interview, ‘Why did you take a shower?

    When the interviewer asked him what answers he had to his questions, he said, “I don’t have answers.”

    In an email Sollecito sent to Knox which she posted on her blog earlier this month, he wrote: “I don’t want to be punished for, nor have to continue to justify, those things that regard you and not me.”

    He continued, ‘Obviously the evidence demonstrates both of our innocence, but it seems that for the judges and the people this objectivity is of no importance.’

    NBC’s legal analyst Lisa Bloom said: “I think he’s distancing himself from her. He’s saying that there is some evidence that may apply to her, which doesn’t apply to him.”

    Knox and Sollecito were both brought back into court about the murder in January, when an Italian appeals court reconvicted both of them for murdering Knox’s former roommate Kercher – a ruling they are again appealing.

    “I am frightened and saddened by this unjust verdict,” Knox wrote after the ruling.

    “Having been found innocent before, I expected better from the Italian justice system.”

    Both Sollecito and Knox were originally sentenced to 25 and 28 years in prison, for the murder of Kercher in Perugia and served four years before being released in 2011.

    When released, due to insufficient and mishandled evidence, Knox went back to her home in Seattle, Washington and when the case went into retrial she refused to return to Italy.

    Knox is denying that Sollecito is trying to distance himself from her, as she wrote in her blog, ‘This is not the case. Actually, Attorney Bongiorno’s closing arguments and Raffaele’s latest statements pinpoint and attack a fundamental weakness in the prosecution’s case against both Raffaele and me that has been ignored for far too long: Raffaele is not a slave.’

    Further: ‘Raffaele has plenty of reason for resentment, but not against me. The only reason he has been dragged into this is because he happens to be my alibi.’

    Image via YouTube

  • Amanda Knox: Innocence Doubted by Raffaele Sollecito

    Amanda Knox: Innocence Doubted by Raffaele Sollecito

    Fingers continue to be pointed in all directions and details continue to emerge in the aftermath of the ruling for the Amanda Knox retrial. Knox’s former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, was recently quoted as doubting his ex-girlfriend’s innocence in the Meredith Kercher murder case. Sollecito shared, “I don’t want to be punished for, nor have to continue to justify, those things that regard you and not me.”

    During an interview an the Today show, Sollecito admitted to asking Knox questions regarding her behavior during the initial onslaught of the investigation. “Certainly I asked her questions. Why did you take a shower? Why did she spent so much time there?”

    It appears to many that Knox’s former boyfriend is making a concerted effort to separate himself from her. According to legal analyst Lisa Bloom, “I think he’s distancing himself from her. He’s saying that there is some evidence that may apply to her, which doesn’t apply to him.”

    During an appearance on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, Sollecito expressed his shock at being targeted a suspect where he believes his connection with Knox is what prompted the target. “Why do they convict me? Why do [they] put me on the corner and say that I’m guilty just because in their minds I have to be guilty because I was her boyfriend. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

    There was a time when Sollecito defended both his and Knox’s innocence. “I don’t know what to think, because objectively, there’s nothing against me and nothing very strong against Amanda,” he said.

    Image Via Wikimedia Commons

  • Amanda Knox: Sollecito Questioning Her Innocence?

    Amanda Knox just can’t catch a break. After being convicted last month for the now infamous 2007 murder of roommate Meredith Kercher, her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito is now admitting that he has questions about Knox’s behavior on the morning after Kercher’s murder, according to the Daily Mail.

    “Certainly I asked her questions,” Sollecito said in the interview for Italian TV, which aired in part on the Today show on Monday.

    He specified, “Why did you take a shower? Why did she spend so much time there?”.

    These are questions he says he doesn’t have the answers to. After the two have stuck together in their alibi for that night for so long and have refused to turn on each other in exchange for reduced jail time, why would he change his tune this late in the game?

    Sollecito could possibly be taking precautions by distancing himself from Knox, according to NBC legal analyst Lisa Bloom.

    “He’s saying that there’s some evidence that may apply to her that doesn’t apply to him.” she said. She could be right. There would be many benefits to distancing himself from Amanda Knox, however, earlier this month she denied the growing speculation.

    Knox states in her personal blog, “It has been claimed that, in this most recent round of closing arguments and in interviews since the latest guilty verdict, Raffaele and his defense attorneys have finally betrayed their resentment and started to put distance between him and me legally and personally. This is not the case. Actually, Attorney Bongiorno’s closing arguments and Raffaele’s latest statements pinpoint and attack a fundamental weakness in the prosecution’s case against both Raffaele and me that has been ignored for far too long: Raffaele is not a slave.”

    She then added, “Raffaele has plenty of reason for resentment, but not against me. The only reason he has been dragged into this is because he happens to be my alibi.”

    Knox also says that Sollecito has been in contact with her by email, and recently said this to her, “I don’t want to be punished for, nor have to continue to justify, those things that regard you and not me. Obviously the evidence demonstrates both of our innocence, but it seems that for the judges and the people this objectivity is of no importance.”

    So is this implication of his attempt at distance true or simply a ploy to insist on her guilt?

    Image via YouTube

  • Amanda Knox And Ex Boyfriend Found Guilty Again

    Amanda Knox’s legal troubles have been through a series of unpredictable twist and turns. In 2009, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito (Knox’s former boyfriend) were convicted of murder. An Italian court found the pair guilty of the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a British student and Knox’s former roommate.

    In a surprising twist of fate, the Italian court changed its mind and acquitted them in 2011 after they had each already served 4 years behind bars. Now, the two have been found guilty yet again…and the saga continues.

    Only one day after receiving news of her reinstated guilty verdict, Knox appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America to vent her feelings.

    “I’m going to fight this to the very end,” Knox said in an interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts. “This really, it hit me like a train. I didn’t expect this to happen. I really expected so much better from the Italian system. They found me innocent before; how could they say beyond a reasonable doubt?” she continued.

    In the interview Knox also revealed that she sent a letter to the parents of Meredith Kercher, to express her sympathy for the loss of their daughter.

    “They deserve respect and the consolation of some kind of acknowledgement,” she said. “I really wish them the best.”

    The 26-year-old Knox still maintains her innocence and said she will “never go willingly”. She believes the renewed guilty verdict is as a result of “overzealous prosecutor”s and “coercive interrogation”.

    At the moment, Knox resides in Seattle, Washington, and would only have to do jail time if she returns to Italy or if she is extradited to Italy–both scenarios seem unlikely. The U.S., does however, have an extradition agreement with the Italian government so it is still very much possible that she could go back to prison.

    On Friday, police found Raffael Sollecito at a hotel near Italy’s border with Slovenia and Austria, just hours after he and Knox’s guilty verdicts were announced.

    According to Luca Maori, Sollecito’s lawyer, his client was near the Italian border because that’s where his current girlfriend lives. After being apprehended, he voluntarily went with police to the station while his girlfriend drove behind.

    Upon arriving at the Udine police station, police confiscated his passport and stamped his identity papers to show that he cannot leave Italy. As per a Florence appeals court, Knox and Sollecito were sentenced to 28 ½ years and 25 years respectively. Neither have been detained pending a final appeal, which could take up to another year.

    Image via YouTube

  • Amanda Knox Verdict Expected Thursday

    Amanda Knox is sitting on pins and needles in her Seattle, Washington home today, as she awaits the verdict of her third murder trial which is presently in jury deliberations in Florence, Italy. A verdict is expected later on Thursday. Knox was previously convicted and served four years of prison time in Italy for the 2007 murder of her college roommate Meredith Kercher. When a court overturned that verdict, Knox returned home to the United States to start a new life. Several months ago she received word that yet a third trial would take place.

    While it was no doubt initially a huge relief to know she didn’t have to travel back to Italy for the third trial, that certainly hasn’t made these last few weeks any less daunting for the University of Washington student who wants nothing more than to live a normal life away from the public eye.

    Amanda Knox’s lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova said he is “serene” about the impending verdict. He says the only conclusion the jury can draw is the “innocence of Amanda Knox.”

    Knox’s former boyfriend, Italian citizen Raffaele Sollecito was in the courtroom during the trial, accompanied by his father and other relatives. He took the stand back in November, claiming all allegations against him were “ridiculous.”

    If Amanda Knox is found guilty in this trial, Italy could request that she be extradited back to that country from the United States. Knox has said she will become a “fugitive” if found guilty again.

    The Amanda Knox trial has been a huge source of debate in the United States for years, with many believing the young woman is guilty and others believing she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her Italian trial certainly sheds credence on the American judicial system where one is innocent until proven guilty. Amanda Knox was deemed guilty in newspapers and on TV reports around the world from the time Meredith Kercher’s body was discovered.

    Probably the saddest part of this entire trial is that very little is ever said about Meredith Kercher. Everyone knows that Amanda Knox now lives in Seattle and attends the University of Washington, but can anyone recite a fact or two about who Meredith Kercher was? Probably not.

    Perhaps once a new verdict is read later on Thursday afternoon, Amanda Knox’s part in this can be put to rest and someone will shed light on Meredith Kercher’s life instead of her death. And maybe Amanda Knox will finally be able to put the entire horrific nightmare behind her.

    What do you think the jury’s verdict will be?

    Image via YouTube

  • Amanda Knox Is Facing Yet Another Verdict

    Amanda Knox has been through the ringer when it comes to enduring trials. However, the prosecutor believes that not all evidence was properly reviewed, and some was mishandled.

    The most recent trial is the fourth one in six years, in which she has waited for an Italian court to decide whether she is guilty or innocent of killing her roommate Meredith Kercher.

    Knox won’t be attending the trial in Italy though, she’s too afraid that she might be “wrongly convicted” and arrested. However, despite the relative safety of her hometown, the tension has intensified, brought on by the prosecutor who seeks to increase Knox’s prison sentence if she is convicted and urge the judge to request her immediate arrest.

    Two judges and eight jurors will decide her fate on Thursday in Florence after final rebuttals by Knox’s legal team and a verdict and a sentence is expected to come sometime in the “late evening” on Thursday.

    While Knox won’t be in Italy for the sentencing, the family of the victim will be present. Kercher’s sister and brother have said they will be in court to hear the decision.

    Knox and her former Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted in 2009 of the 2007 murder of Kercher, which happened in the cottage the women shared in Perugia. The prosecutor at the time said the murder was the result of a sex game gone awry.

    That verdict was overturned in 2011, freeing Knox after a four-year prison stint. Now, Italy’s Supreme Court has ordered an appeals court to review the case and that court will render its verdict this week.

    Knox’s lawyers Carlo Dalla Vedova and Luciano Ghirga told reporters at the last hearing that “she cannot wait to end this nightmare.” They said she has followed the trial “step by step” and that she was “very worried” about the outcome.

    Sollecito will not be present in the courtroom either, but will wait for the verdict at his family home in Puglia, southern Italy. His father has said his son is not psychologically able to await the decision in court that day. “He will almost certainly stay at home and has no intention of course of running away.”

    If prosecutor Alessandro Crini gets his way, Knox and Sollecito will be sentenced to 26 years in prison for murder and her sentence for a related slander conviction would be increased from one year to four years.

    Image via YouTube

  • Amanda Knox Says She’s Willing To Be a Fugitive

    In an interview with an Italian newspaper, Amanda Knox, the American student found not guilty in a 2009 murder, said she wouldn’t go back to jail if convicted.

    “[If found guilty] legally I’ll be defined a fugitive, but I will continue to fight for my innocence,” she said. And the main reason she’s come to this decision is because she believes any kind of conviction would be a malicious one, so she simply won’t abide by it. “I will not willingly submit myself to injustice,” Knox warned.

    In an interview with the UK based show “Daybreak,” the 26-year old says she has no faith in the Italian court system, and feels her and accused ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, were being scapegoated by the legal system for unknown reasons.

    “I have plenty to fear because I was already imprisoned wrongfully, I was already convicted wrongfully and this is everything to fear, this, as an innocent person, is the ultimate nightmare, this does not make sense,” she said.

    However, defense lawyer for Sollecito, Giulia Bongiorno, says everything does make sense. According to his theory, Italian police made the couple appear guilty because they wanted to calm the nerves of the local community. “[They] did not want to think that a stranger, a monster, could have entered a house and murdered a student,” he said.

    In 2009 Knox and Sollecito were convicted of murdering student Meredith Kercher, and in a retrial, both were found not guilty on Oct. 3, 2011. However, in September of 2013, another trial began when the previous decision was later appealed. Currently, Knox is living and attending college in Seattle and has been doing so ever since leaving Italy over three years ago.

    And Knox says since there was no proof about her committing these crimes, which were attached to a sex-party gone wrong, says the prosecution, she feels the Italian legal system doesn’t have the right or true authority to make her return. “No one has ever claimed that I was ever taking part in deviant sexual activity,” she told CNN. “None of my roommates, none of my friends, none of the people who knew me there. This is simply coming out of the prosecution.”

    Image via YouTube

  • Amanda Knox Sends Email To Italian Court

    Amanda Knox Sends Email To Italian Court

    “I am innocent. I did not kill, rape, steal mastermind, instigate,” wrote accused killer Amanda Knox in an email to an Italian court. The email was read aloud by her lawyer Lucian Ghirga.

    It’s been almost five years since Knox and her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito was convicted of murder, sexual assault and simulating a burglary against 21-year old Meredith Kercher, and it’s been almost three years since the decision was overturned by an appellate court in 2011.

    However, Knox isn’t completely out of the woods yet, as Italy’s supreme court–the Court of Cassation–ordered both Knox and Sollecito to face retrial.

    It was Knox’s lawyer who made the request to Judge Allesandro Nencini, asking if the 26-year old defendant would be able to make a “spontaneous declaration” by way of email, which was granted.

    In Knox’s statement she said the prosecution never proved that she was at the home that her and Kercher shared on the night of the murder, and DNA evidence supports that.

    “The prosecution has failed in its attempt to prove that I was on the murder scene and that I was the one to fatally stab her without leaving any DNA of mine on the scene, wrote Knox,” who’s now living in her hometown of Seattle. “This is because it would have been impossible for me to erase all of my DNA evidence on the crime scene and leave that of another person. Either I was there or I wasn’t and all of the forensic evidence proves I was not.”

    Knox then went on to say she decided to send an email to the court instead of showing up in person due to fear. “I am not present in court because I am scared,” she wrote. “I am scared that the vehemence of the prosecutor will move you and that the smoke they are using will blind you.”

    Knox and Sollecito have always denied their involvement of these crimes since being questioned back in 2009, while Rudy Guede, who admitted to being at the murder scene, was found guilty of sexual assault and murder in October of 2008.

    Image via YouTube

  • Amanda Knox: Italian Prosecutor Wants Her Back In Prison

    Italian prosecutor, Alessandro Crini, has appealed an appellate court to convict Amanda Knox for the 2007 murder of her British roommate. The prosecutor urged the appeals court Monday not to repeat mistakes made by the high court that freed her.

    Amanda had been convicted in 2009 of the murder of Meredith Kercher – a British student, and sentenced to serve 26 years. She only served 4 years of the 26-year sentence before her conviction was overturned on October 3, 2011 by an appellate court. In yet another twist, her acquittal was overturned by the Supreme Court on March 26, 2013 and her case was sent back to the high court for reconsideration.

    Kercher’s body was discovered in a pool of blood in her room on Nov. 2, 2007 with her throat slit. There were also signs that she was sexually assaulted. The lower court had argued that the crime was fueled by a sexual game gone wrong, but the prosecutor departed from that line of argument saying that the crime was not so much sexually motivated; instead, it was an act of physical aggression with a sexual expression.

    Prosecutor Crini said that the Supreme Court had “razed to the ground” the appellate court’s 2011 decision to nullify the guilty conviction. The high court has ordered a fresh appeals trials saying that the earlier appeal was marred with contradictions.

    The prosecutor’s demands came after more than 10 hours of closing arguments spread over two days during which he argued that Knox and her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito (co-defendant) committed  the crime in concert of a third man (Rudy Guede ) who was convicted separately. The crime was reportedly committed as a result of disagreement between the roommates over cleanliness. Testimonies indicate that there had been tensions between Kercher and Knox about the level of cleanliness.

    Following this development, the Meredith Kercher’s 2007 murder case will be getting its third trial. Knox’s co-accused, Sollecito, has also attended two hearings so far. The third person in the case, Rudy Guede, is already serving 16 years in prison after being found guilty of Kercher’s murder.

    (main image via YouTube)

  • Amanda Knox Retrial, Details Emerge

    The retrial for the Meredith Kercher murder has been holding the attention of the public as much as the first trial. For now, reports claim that a verdict is expected by January. However, considering the emerging details, expecting a verdict within months may prove to be a stretch.

    One obvious difference with the retrial is that one suspect is not present this time. Amanda Knox’s absence from the courts, at her choosing, was best surmised when she spoke with the Today Show. “I was already imprisoned as an innocent person in Italy, and I can’t reconcile the choice to go back with that experience,” she said.

    Some still question Knox’s innocence, in part, due to swirling rumors of a knife that may contain DNA from both Knox and Kercher. According to Gazetta del Sud, police have just testified that the knife has traces of Knox’s DNA, but not that of Kercher.

    (image)

    Carlo Dalla Vedova, Knox’s attorney, said, “The report confirms that this is a kitchen knife. It is not a murder weapon.”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyhE7cjFkGU

    Meanwhile Knox’s former boyfriend, 29-year-old Raffaele Sollecito, continues to protest his innocence, and recently told the Italian courts, “I have been described as a ruthless killer but I am nothing of the sort.”

    He spoke about the young, idealistic love he experienced with Knox. “Amanda was my first love. Amanda was carefree. She and I wanted to be isolated in our nest of desire in a little fairy tale,” he said.

    The paradox between this idealistic love and the heinous crime, from which both Knox and Sollecito have been accused, has not been lost on Sollecito. “We were thinking of anything but the distorted, scornful vision of humanity of which we are being accused,” he said.

    Regardless of the outcome during this trial, returning to normalcy for Knox and Sollecito does not seem to be a guarantee. Giulia Bongiorno, Sollecito’s lawyer, explained, “He cannot live normally in Italy because he is chased around by the media.”

    As the retrial continues unfolding, many may be wondering if this case will one day be officially closed.

    [Images Via YouTube (1) (2)]

  • Amanda Knox Trial: Victim’s DNA Not on Kitchen Knife

    If you weren’t sure whether to believe in Amanda Knox’s innocence, a DNA test performed on the infamous kitchen knife may help to finally clear her name. Knox’s laywer, Carlo Dalla Vedova, is currently in Florence, Italy while the case against Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito is once again being heard in an appeals court. In Italy, there is no double jeopardy law. Therefore, even though Knox was found not guilty in 2011, her case can still be heard again. Italy’s highest court overturned the not guilty verdict from the appeal because the court felt that important DNA evidence was not taken into consideration.

    It now seems that the kitchen knife, which was originally alleged to be the murder weapon used to kill Amanda Knox’s British roommate Meredith Kercher, had no DNA evidence on it which matched the victim. The knife is an important piece of evidence because it played a large role in the original verdict which convicted both Knox and Sollecito of the crime that took place in Perugia.

    Knox’s lawyer told the AP today that the knife was simply a tool in preparing Amanda’s meals, not a deadly weapon. The knife was found by the police in a kitchen drawer at Sollecito’s apartment. Italian prosecutors have pushed the knife as the murder weapon because they felt that the blade matched Kercher’s wounds. They also contended, at the original trial, that DNA from Kercher was found on the knife. The new DNA evidence heard today now proves otherwise.

    Meredith Kercher was brutally killed in 2007 after being stabbed more than 40 times. Amanda Knox, who is now 26-years-old, was not required to return to Italy to face the appeals court. Both she and Sollecito have both maintained their innocence through this entire process which included a double conviction in 2009, where they both subsequently sentenced to 26 years in an Italian prison. However, the conviction was overturned in 2011 by an appeals court, upon which time Knox returned to her hometown of Seattle, Washington. Knox is currently a student at the University of Washington.

    Knox family spokesman, David Marriott, told the press that he did not think Amanda would have anything to say about this new evidence. A verdict for the appeal is not expected until January.

    Image Via Wikipedia Commons