Amanda Knox (Part II)

Trial of Guede

Guede fled to Germany shortly after the murder. During a November 19, 2007, Skype conversation with his friend Giacomo Benedetti, Guede did not mention Knox or Sollecito as being in the house on the night of the murder. Later his account changed and he indirectly implicated them in the murder, which he denied involvement in. Guede was arrested in Germany on November 20, and then extradited to Italy on December 6. Guede opted to be tried in a special fast track procedure by Judge Micheli. He was not charged with having had a knife. He did not testify and was not questioned about his statements, which had altered from his original version. Guede was convicted of murder, but the official judges' report on the conviction specified that he had not had a knife or stabbed the victim, or stolen any of Kercher's possessions. Micheli's finding that Guede must have had an accomplice gave support to the later prosecution of Knox.

The judges reasoned that Guede would not have faked a burglary, because it would have pointed to him in view of his own earlier break-ins (though at the time of the murder he was known to police only for being detained for trespassing in Florence). Despite Guede saying that Kercher had let him into the house through the entry door, the judges decided against the possibility of Guede's having gotten in by simply knocking on the door, because they thought Kercher would not have opened the cottage door to him (although she knew he was an acquaintance of her boyfriend, Giacomo Silenzi).  In his original account, Guede had said that Kercher's confrontation with her killer had started at the entry door to the house. One legal commentator on the case thought that insufficient consideration had been given to the possibility that Guede had called at the house on some pretext while Kercher was alone there, murdered her after she opened the door to him, and faked a burglary to cover his tracks.

In October 2008, Guede was found guilty of the sexual assault and murder of Kercher and sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment. His prison sentence was ultimately reduced to 16 years.

The first trial of Knox and Sollecito

In 2009, Knox and Sollecito pleaded not guilty at a Corte d'Assise on charges of murder, sexual assault, carrying a knife (which Guede had not been charged with), simulating a burglary, and theft of 300 euros, two credit cards, and two mobile phones. There was no charge in relation to Kercher's missing keys to the entry door and her bedroom door; although Guede's trial judgement said he had not stolen anything. There was a separate but concurrent trial of Knox with the same jury as her murder trial in which she was accused of falsely denouncing her employer for the murder. Knox's police interrogation was deemed improper and ruled inadmissible for the murder trial, but was heard in her nominally separate trial for false denunciation.

Prosecution case

According to the prosecution, Knox's first call of November 2, to Kercher's English phone, was to ascertain if Kercher's phones had been found, and Sollecito had tried to break in the bedroom door because after he and Knox locked it behind them, they realized they had left something that might incriminate them.  Knox's call to her mother in Seattle, a quarter of an hour before the discovery of the body was said by prosecutors to show Knox was acting as if something serious might have happened before the point in time when an innocent person would have such concern.

A prosecution witness, homeless man Antonio Curatolo, said Knox and Sollecito were in a nearby square on the night of the murder. Prosecutors advanced a single piece of forensic evidence linking Sollecito to Kercher's bedroom, where the murder had taken place: fragments of his DNA on Kercher's bra clasp.  Giulia Bongiorno, leading Sollecito's defense, questioned how Sollecito's DNA could have gotten on the small metal clasp of the bra, but not on the fabric of the bra back strap from which it was torn. "How can you touch the hook without touching the cloth?", Bongiorno asked.  The backstrap of the bra had multiple traces of DNA belonging to Guede.  According to the prosecution's reconstruction, Knox had attacked Kercher in her bedroom, repeatedly banged her head against a wall, forcefully held her face, and tried to strangle her.  Guede, Knox and Sollecito had removed Kercher's jeans and held her on her hands and knees while Guede had sexually abused her. Knox had cut Kercher with a knife before inflicting the fatal stab wound; then faked a burglary. The judge pointedly questioned Knox about a number of details, especially concerning her phone calls to her mother and Romanelli.

Defense case

The defense suggested that Guede was a lone killer who had murdered Kercher after breaking in. Knox's lawyers pointed out that no shoe prints, clothing fibers, hairs, fingerprints, skin cells, or DNA of Knox's were found on Kercher's body, clothes, handbag, or anywhere else in Kercher's bedroom.  The prosecution alleged that all forensic traces in the room that would have incriminated Knox had been wiped away by her and Sollecito.  Knox's lawyers said it would have been impossible to selectively remove her traces, and emphasized that Guede's shoe prints, fingerprints, and DNA were found in Kercher's bedroom.

Guede's DNA was on the strap of Kercher's bra, which had been torn off, and his DNA was found on a vaginal swab taken from her body.  Guede's bloody palm print was on a pillow that had been placed under Kercher's hips. Guede's DNA, mixed with Kercher's, was on the left sleeve of her bloody sweatshirt and in bloodstains inside her shoulder bag, from which 300 euros and credit cards had been stolen.  Both sets of defense lawyers requested the judges to order independent reviews of evidence including DNA and the compatibility of the wounds with the alleged murder weapon; the request was denied.   In final pleas to the court, Sollecito's lawyer described Knox as "a weak and fragile girl" who had been "duped by the police". Knox's lawyer pointed to text messages between Knox and Kercher as showing that they had been friends.

Verdict and controversy

On December 5, 2009, Knox, by then 22, was convicted on charges of faking a break-in, defamation, sexual violence, and murder, and was sentenced to 26 years imprisonment. Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years.  In Italy, opinion was not generally favorable toward Knox, and an Italian jurist remarked: "This is the simplest and fairest criminal trial one could possibly think of in terms of evidence."

In the United States, the verdict was widely viewed as a miscarriage of justice. American lawyers expressed concern about pre-trial publicity, and statements excluded from the murder case being allowed for a contemporaneous civil suit heard by the same jury. Knox's defense attorneys were seen as, by American standards, passive in the face of the prosecution's use of character assassination.  Although acknowledging that Knox might have been a person of interest for American police in similar circumstances, journalist Nina Burleigh, who had spent months in Perugia during the trial, while researching a book on the case, said the conviction had not been based on solid proof, and there had been resentment at the Knox family that amounted to "anti-Americanism".

A number of US experts spoke out against DNA evidence used by the prosecution. According to consultant Gregory Hampikian, the Italian forensic police could not replicate the key result, claimed to have successfully identified DNA at levels below those an American laboratory would attempt to analyze, and never supplied validation of their methods.  Knox was indicted in 2010 on charges of defamation against the police for saying she had been struck across her head during the interview in which she incriminated herself.

In May 2011, Greg Hampikian, director of the Idaho Innocence Project, a non-profit investigative organization dedicated to proving the innocence of wrongly convicted people, said forensic results from the crime scene pointed to Guede as the killer and to his having acted on his own.

Acquittal and release

On October 3, 2011, Amanda Knox left Perugia Prison with Corrado Maria Daclon, secretary-general of the Italy–USA Foundation.

A Corte d'Assise verdict of guilty is not a definitive conviction. What is in effect a new trial, Corte d'Assise d'Appello, reviews the case. The appeal (or second grade) trial began November 2010 and was presided over by Judges Claudio Pratillo Hellmann and Massimo Zanetti. A court-ordered review of the contested DNA evidence by independent experts noted numerous basic errors in the gathering and analysis of the evidence and concluded that no evidential trace of Kercher's DNA had been found on the alleged murder weapon, which police had found in Sollecito's kitchen.  The review found the forensic police examination showed evidence of multiple males' DNA fragments on the bra clasp, which had been lost on the floor for 47 days, the court-appointed expert testified the context strongly suggested contamination.  On October 3, 2011, Knox and Sollecito were found not guilty of the murder.

In an official statement giving the grounds for the acquittals, Hellmann said Knox had been confused by interviews of "obsessive duration" in a language she was still learning, and forensic evidence did not support the idea that Knox and Sollecito had been present at the murder.  It was emphasized that Knox's first calls raised the alarm and brought the police to the house, which made the prosecution's assertion that she had been trying to delay the discovery of the body untenable. She and Sollecito's accounts failing to completely match did not constitute evidence they had given a false alibi. Discounting Curatolo's testimony as self-contradictory, the judges observed that he was a heroin addict. Having noted that there was no evidence of any phone calls or texts between Knox or Sollecito and Guede, the judges concluded there was a "material non-existence" of evidence to support the guilty verdicts, and that an association among Sollecito, Knox, and Guede to commit the murder was "far from probable".

The false accusation conviction in relation to her employer was upheld, and Judge Hellman imposed a three-year sentence although this was nominal, being less than Knox had already served. She was immediately released and returned to her Seattle home.)

Knox wrote a letter to Corrado Maria Daclon, Secretary-General of the Italy–USA Foundation the day after regaining her freedom:

To hold my hand and offer support and respect throughout the obstacles and the controversy, there were Italians. There was the Italy–USA Foundation, and many others that shared my pain and that helped me survive, with hope. I am eternally grateful for their caring hospitality and their courageous commitment. To those that wrote me, that defended me that stood by me that prayed for me... I am forever grateful to you.

Retrial

On March 26, 2013, Italy's highest court, the Supreme Court of Cassation set aside the acquittals of the Hellmann second-level trial on the grounds that it had gone beyond the remit of a Corte d'Assise d'Appello by not ordering new DNA tests and failing to give weight to circumstantial evidence in a context such as Knox's accusation of the bar owner in the disputed interviews. A note Knox composed in the police station (not mentioning Guede) was regarded by the Supreme Court as confirmation that she and Guede were present in Via Della Pergola 7 while Kercher was attacked.  A retrial was ordered. Knox was represented, but remained in the United States.

Judge Nencini presided at the retrial and granted a prosecution request for analysis of previously unexamined DNA sample found on a kitchen knife of Sollecito's, which the prosecution alleged was the murder weapon based on the forensic police reporting that Kercher's DNA was on it, a conclusion discredited by court-appointed experts at the appeal trial.  When the unexamined sample was tested, no DNA belonging to Kercher was found.  On January 30, 2014, Knox and Sollecito were found guilty.   In their written explanation the judges emphasized Guede's fast-track verdict report was a judicial reference point establishing that he had not acted alone. The Nencini verdict report said there must have been a cleanup to remove traces of Knox from the house while leaving Guede's. The report said that there had been no burglary and the signs of one were staged. It did not consider the possibility of Guede's having been responsible for faking a break-in.

Forensic controversy continues

Although not part of the defense's team of experts, an authority on the forensic use of DNA, Professor Peter Gill, publicly said that the case against Knox and Sollecito was misconceived because they had a legitimate excuse for their DNA being present on Sollecito's kitchen knife, and in the crime scene apartment. According to Gill, the DNA fragment from Sollecito on the bra clasp could have got there through Sollecito having touched the handle of Kercher's door while trying to force it, enabling transfer of his DNA to the bra clasp inside the bedroom on the latex gloves used by investigators.

Final decision

On March 27, 2015, the ultimate appeal by Knox and Sollecito was heard by the Supreme Court of Cassation; it ruled that the case was without foundation, thereby definitively acquitting them of the murder. Her defamation conviction was upheld but the three-year sentence was deemed served by the time she had already spent in prison.   Rather than merely declaring that there were errors in the earlier court cases or that there was not enough evidence to convict, the court ruled that Knox and Sollecito were innocent of involvement in the murder.  On September 7, 2015, the Court published the report on the acquittal, citing "glaring errors", "investigative amnesia", and "guilty omissions", where a five-judge panel said that the prosecutors who won the original murder conviction failed to prove a "whole truth" to back up the scenario that Knox and Sollecito killed Kercher.  They also stated that there were "sensational failures" (clamorose defaillance) in the investigation, and that the lower court had been guilty of "culpable omissions" (colpevoli omissioni) in ignoring expert testimony that demonstrated contamination of evidence.

Compensation

On January 24, 2019, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ordered Italy to pay compensation to Knox for violating her rights in the hours after her arrest in Perugia. Italy was ordered to pay Knox 18,400 Euros (about US$20,800) for not providing her with either a lawyer or a competent interpreter when she was first held in custody.

Personal and professional life

After returning to the United States, Knox completed her degree and worked on a book about her case. She was often followed by paparazzi. Her family incurred large debts from the years of supporting her in Italy and was left insolvent, the proceeds from Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir having gone to pay legal fees to her Italian lawyers.  Knox has been a reviewer and journalist for the then West Seattle Herald, later subsumed into Westside Seattle, and attended events of the Innocence Project and related organizations.  In a 2017 interview, Knox said she was devoting herself to writing and activism for the wrongfully accused.  She hosted The Scarlet Letter Reports on Facebook Watch, a series that examined the "gendered nature of public shaming".  Knox also hosts a podcast, The Truth about True Crime.  She has been a featured speaker at fundraising events for non-profits, including the Innocence Project.  In June 2019, Knox returned to Italy as a keynote speaker at a conference on criminal justice, where she was part of a panel titled "Trial by Media".

Knox is married to long-time boyfriend, author Christopher Robinson who is connected to the Robinson Newspapers.

Media

Books

Burleigh, Nina (2011). The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The trials of Amanda Knox. New York: Broadway Books. ISBN 978-0-307-58860-9. OCLC 748281716.

Kercher, John (2012). Meredith: Our Daughter's Murder and the Heartbreaking Quest for the Truth. London: Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-1-4447-4276-3. OCLC 986555718.

Knox, Amanda (2013). Waiting to be Heard: A Memoir. New York, New York: Harper. ISBN 978-0-06-221722-6. OCLC 843126750.

Sollecito, Raffaele; Gumbel, Andrew (2012). Honor Bound: My Journey to Hell and Back with Amanda Knox. New York: Gallery Books. ISBN 978-1-4516-9640-0. OCLC 875073026.

Documentaries

48 Hours (April 10, 2008). "A Long Way from Home". Produced by Joe Halderman, Douglas Longhini, and Chris Young. CBS News. A documentary broadcast in the United States

Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy, also known as The Amanda Knox Story, February 21, 2011, An American true crime television film that first aired on the Lifetime network.

"Amanda Knox: The untold story". CBS News. October 9, 2011. Retrieved July 10, 2018.

 Sawyer, Diane (April 30, 2013). "Murder Mystery: Amanda Knox Speaks". 20/20. ABC News. Retrieved July 10, 2018. Diane Sawyer was the first to interview Knox after she was freed.

 Amanda Knox, October 2016, a Netflix Original Documentary