Vindicated: Friends of Amanda Knox celebrate acquittal, ‘justice delayed’
Mar 27, 2015, 4:33 PM | Updated: 9:11 pm
When presented with the prospect of extradition and once again facing jail time in Italy, Amanda Knox was emphatic.
“I’m definitely not going back [willingly],” she told The Guardian newspaper in 2014. “They’ll have to catch me and pull me back kicking and screaming into a prison that I don’t deserve to be in.”
The Seattle native and former University of Washington student won’t have to worry anymore. Knox is now completely free, vindicated.
Italy’s highest court acquitted Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for the murder of Meredith Kercher in 2007.
Amanda Knox relieved and grateful after court saga ends
The ruling comes as a shock to court watchers who expected the three-judge panel to either uphold the most recent conviction – making Knox a fugitive from Italian justice and possible starting a process leading to her extradition to Italy – or sending the case back to the appellate level, prolonging her nearly eight-year legal ordeal.
There were fireworks heard near Knox’s childhood home in West Seattle when the verdict was read.
Attorney Anne Bremner echoed Knox supporters across Seattle.
“It’s justice delayed, but it wasn’t justice denied,” said the spokesperson for The Friends of Amanda Knox. “It’s wonderful that she’s finally free and she’s free forever.”
An Ivory-Coast man, Rudy Guede, is halfway through a 16-year-sentence for killing Kercher. His DNA and footprints were all over the exchange students’ home. A break-in was staged in the bedroom where Kercher’s body was found.
Initial rulings by the Italian court claimed Guede did not act alone, and pointed the finger at Knox and her then-boyfriend.
The primary evidence against the pair included a tiny piece of Sollecito’s DNA on Kercher’s bra clasp and evidence of cleaning up at the crime scene.
Knox maintained her innocence throughout the legal ups and downs.
“You cannot commit a murder and have all of this evidence, all of this blood everywhere, all of the evidence of the person who did it, and that not be me – And then say yeah, I was the person who plunged the knife,” Knox said to The Guardian last year. “It’s impossible. It’s literally impossible.”
Sollecito and Knox were first convicted of killing Kercher in 2009, but that ruling was thrown out on appeal in 2011 and both defendants were freed. The conviction was reinstated in early 2014, setting the stage for another – and this time final – ruling by the high court.
