Amanda Knox will seek compensation for time spent in Italian prison, lawyer says
Amanda Knox will seek compensation for the time she spent in an Italian prison in the 2007 fatal stabbing of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, according to one of Knox’s defense lawyers.
The Italian Court of Cassation on Friday cleared Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, in Kercher’s death, report the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.), the Associated Press and the New York Times. The five-judge panel has 90 days to release a detailed opinion explaining why it found Knox and Sollecito were not guilty of the crime.
The high court did uphold a three-year sentence against Knox on a defamation charge. The charge stems from her accusation that another person killed Kercher. Knox faces no possibility of additional prison time because she spent four years behind bars.
According to AP, the decision by the five-judge panel, “amounted to a rebuke of another high court ruling two years ago” that vacated acquittals of Knox and Sollecito, and ordered a new trial. The panel decision on Friday amounted to a full acquittal, rather than a finding of insufficient evidence, the story says.
A full acquittal by the top court is “very rare, and goes beyond our most optimistic predictions,” said one of Knox’s defense lawyers, Luciano Ghirga.
Another defense lawyer for Knox, Carlo Dalla Vedova, said Knox’s family will “be seeking compensation for wrongful imprisonment,” report the Telegraph and International Business Times.
Prosecutors had alleged Knox and Sollecito joined with Rudy Hermann Guede to kill Kercher during a sexual assault. Guede, who was convicted and is in prison for Kercher’s death, had maintained he had sex with Kercher but did not kill her.
Knox is currently living in Seattle and recently announced her engagement to a rock musician, a school friend who wrote to her while she was in jail. Knox writes an arts column for a local newspaper.
