Botched investigation, lack of evidence required acquittal of Amanda Knox, top Italian court says
A botched investigation by Italian authorities made it impossible to answer certain questions about exactly what happened when the 21-year-old roommate of Amanda Knox was murdered in 2007, the country’s top court said Monday.
But, in the absence of any evidence putting Knox, now 28, and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, now 31, in the room where Meredith Kercher was slain in Perugia, Italy, the Court of Cassation said, the acquittal of both defendants was required. The court made the ruling in March, but its written explanation came this week, the Associated Press reports.
Another man, Rudy Hermann Guede, was convicted separately and is in prison, sentenced to 16 years. Knox and Sollecito were initially convicted of being his accomplices, but their convictions were reversed after both had spent several years in prison.
Knox defense lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova called Monday’s opinion a “great censure, a note of solemn censure of all the investigators,” the AP reports.
He also called the case “an ugly page of Italian judicial history,” the New York Times (reg. req.) reports.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Another guilty verdict for American Amanda Knox in Italian roommate-murder case”
ABAJournal.com: “Amanda Knox will seek compensation for time spent in Italian prison, lawyer says”
Updated Sept. 10 to correctly state that Knox was initially convicted of being an accomplice of Guede.
