Amanda Knox appeals most recent murder conviction
Jun 17, 2014, 6:20 PM | Updated: 6:25 pm
University of Washington student Amanda Knox has filed a new appeal with an Italian court in hopes of overturning her recent murder conviction in the long running saga of the 2007 murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher.
The appeal with Italy’s Court of Cassation, the country’s court of last resort, seeks to overturn her conviction and exonerate her in the 2007 killing, her Seattle-based spokesman David Marriott tells KING 5.
Knox was arrested in 2007 for the killing in the small university town of Perugia, where she was an exchange student. She was convicted of murder in 2009 along with her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito.
An appeals court in Perugia overturned the conviction in 2011, and Knox returned home to Seattle and resumed her studies at UW.
But prosecutors appealed the acquittal and in January 2014 a court in Florence reinstated the murder convictions. The court also increased the sentence to over 28 years.
“This has gotten out of hand,” Knox said in a statement at the time. “Having been found innocent before, I expected better from the Italian justice system.”
Kercher, 21, was found dead in a pool of blood in the bedroom of the apartment she and Knox shared in the town of Perugia, where they were studying. Kercher had been sexually assaulted and her throat slashed.
Knox and Sollecito denied any involvement in the killing. After initially giving confused alibis, they insisted they were at Sollecito’s apartment that night, smoking marijuana, watching a movie and making love.
Prosecutors originally argued that Kercher was killed in a drug-fueled sex game gone awry — an accusation that made the case a tabloid sensation.
But at the third trial, a new prosecutor argued that the violence stemmed from arguments between roommates Knox and Kercher about cleanliness and was triggered by a toilet left unflushed by a third defendant, Rudy Hermann Guede.
Guede, who is from the Ivory Coast, was convicted in a separate trial in a verdict that specified he did not commit the crime alone. He is serving a 16-year sentence.
Knox has repeatedly maintained her innocence and vowed that she is innocent. In her blog, she has written frequently about the injustice and lack of evidence in the case.
“Experts agreed that my DNA was not found anywhere in Meredith’s room, while the DNA of the actual murderer, Rudy Guede, was found throughout that room and on Meredith’s body,” she wrote in her most recent post. “This forensic evidence directly refutes the multiple-assailant theory found in the new motivation document. This theory is not supported by any reliable forensic evidence.”
Marriott tells KING 5 another appeals trial for Knox could take place later this year, with a final decision expected in 2015. There’s no word whether she would attend the trial. Knox remained in the United States for her last trial.