Italian Court Finds Amanda Knox Guilty Of Murder

[Janice]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...&ncid=webmail1

Amanda Knox Verdict: Italian Court Finds American Student Guilty Of Murder

An Italian court has found Amanda Knox guilty of murder in her latest trial on Thursday, ABC reports. This is the third trial for Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend, Rafaelle Sollecito, in the 2007 murder of Knox's British roommate, Meredith Kercher.

An Italian court found Knox and Sollecito guilty in 2009, but the pair was acquitted in 2011 on appeal after spending four years in jail.

Knox returned to the Seattle area to resume her studies until Italy's highest court struck down the appellate decision in March 2013.

As USA Today notes, the Knox saga has grabbed headlines around the world, with the University of Washington student being portrayed "both as a she-devil bent on sexual adventure and as a naif caught up in Italy's Byzantine justice system."

With the conviction, Knox and Sollecito's case will return to the supreme court. If the verdict is upheld, Italy could seek to have Knox extradited in order to serve her sentence. This process could take months, and according to legal experts, the U.S. might challenge extradition on the basis of "double jeopardy," a defense that forbids a defendant from being tried again for the same crime after an acquittal.

More from the Associated Press:

An appeals court in Florence on Thursday upheld the guilty verdict against U.S. student Amanda Knox and her ex-boyfriend for the 2007 murder of her British roommate. Knox was sentenced to 28 1/2 years in prison, raising the specter of a long legal battle over her extradition. After nearly 12 hours of deliberations, the court reinstated the guilty verdict first handed down against Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in 2009.

The verdict had been overturned in 2011 and the pair freed from prison, but Italy's supreme court vacated that decision and sent the case back for a third trial in Florence.

Sollecito, whose lawyers said they would appeal the verdict, was sentenced to 25 years. Reached by telephone, Knox's father, Curt Knox, said he had no comment.

While Sollecito was in court Thursday morning, he didn't return for the verdict, and the 26-year-old Knox was home in Seattle awaiting the decision with, in her own words, "my heart in my throat."

Sollecito's lawyers said they were stunned and would take their appeal to Italy's top court. "There isn't a shred of proof," said attorney Luca Maori said.

Presiding Judge Alessando Nencini ordered the 29-year-old Sollecito's passport revoked but made no requests for Knox's movements to be limited, saying she was "justifiably abroad."

Knox's defense team gave its last round of rebuttals earlier in the day, ending four months of arguments in Knox's and Sollecito's third trial for the 2007 murder of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, in the Italian university town of Perugia.

Knox's lawyer, Carlo Dalla Vedova, had told the court he was "serene" about the verdict because he believes the only conclusion from the files is "the innocence of Amanda Knox."

"It is not possible to convict a person because it is probable that she is guilty," Dalla Vedova said. "The penal code does not foresee probability. It foresees certainty."

Dalla Vedova evoked Dante, noting that the Florentine writer reserved the lower circle of hell for those who betrayed trust, as he asserted that police had done to Knox when they held her overnight for questioning without legal representation and without advising her that she was a suspect.

Knox had returned to Seattle after spending four years in jail before being acquitted in 2011. In an email to this court, Knox wrote that she feared a wrongful conviction.

She told Italian state TV in an interview earlier this month that she would wait for the verdict at her mother's house "with my heart in my throat."

Knox's absence didn't formally hurt her case since she was freed by a court and defendants in Italy are not required to appear at their trials. However, Nencini reacted sternly to her emailed statement, noting that defendants have a right to be heard if they appear in person.

Sollecito, on the other hand, had made frequent court appearances, always in a purple sweater, the color of the local Florentine soccer club.

He was in court again Thursday morning, accompanied by his father and other relatives and said he would return for the verdict. But he didn't come for the verdict.

[Wawwie]

Poor Amanda! If her extradition is ordered from America to Italy, I hope she runs away to Mexico or Canada. Unfortunately, she will have to be a fugitive.

The Italian judicial system is ********! Rudy Guede is the confessed killer of Merideth Kurcher. Case closed! Amanda and Raffaele should never have been on trial. The only connection Amanda had to Merideth was that they were room mates.

JUSTICE FOR AMANDA!!!

BTW, I almost NEVER side with defendants.....

O.J. Simpson = GUILTY
Casey Anthony = GUILTY
Jodi Arias = GUILTY
George Zimmerman = GUILTY
Martin MacNeill = GUILTY

Amanda Knox is one of the ONLY defendants that I ever thought was innocent.

[Vahan]

Not Fugitive from Justice, Fugitive from Injustice.

[Zoneboy]

Originally Posted by Wawwie

The Italian judicial system is ********!

[Wawwie]

Originally Posted by Zoneboy

Put your eyes back in your head.


Definition of ********: slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development or academic progress

That describes THE ITALIAN JUSTICE SYSTEM.

[Zoneboy]

Originally Posted by Wawwie

Put your eyes back in your head.


Definition of ********: slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development or academic progress

That describes THE ITALIAN JUSTICE SYSTEM.

I don't need you to define the word for me. I'm just sick and tired of it being used to describe someone or something when there's plenty of other words that will work just as well.

[Janice]

Fiind another word. TJ put it in the rules (#15), not to use the word ******** in that way.

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/...php?f=154&a=18

[Wawwie]

Originally Posted by Janice

Fiind another word. TJ put it in the rules (#15), not to use the word ******** in that way.

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/...php?f=154&a=18

How about slow, backwards or intellectually inferior?

[Janice]

Originally Posted by Wawwie

How about slow, backwards or intellectually inferior?

That's fine; not offensive.

[Vahan]

Wawwie, just a fair warning, but we've had a few users in the past, who will remain nameless, who couldn't take it anymore, and either left on their own terms, or went into a fit of rage and got completely banned. Hope you don't make that same mistake.

[Janice]

Originally Posted by Vahan

Wawwie, just a fair warning, but we've had a few users in the past, who will remain nameless, who couldn't take it anymore, and either left on their own terms, or went into a fit of rage and got completely banned. Hope you don't make that same mistake.

Couldn't take what anymore, follow the rules? Nobody is picked on here. As long as people follow TJ's rules, there's no problem.

[Vahan]

I was thinking back to the Trayvon Martin case. Some people there either got banned for life, or left, and it doesn't look like they have returned.

[shotzette]

Originally Posted by Vahan

Not Fugitive from Justice, Fugitive from Injustice.

Brilliantly put, Vahan, as always.

[Steve_uk]

Why Americans find another country's judicial process hard to swallow is a mystery to me,when we are not dealing with any past dictatorship your country helped to bolster but an advanced European democracy on the way to political union along with twenty six other countries sharing the same aspirations and beliefs. Before you rush to judgement maybe you should reread the evidence two judges and eight jurors have been hearing for the past few months. You should also consider what effect a possible refusal to extradite the defendant to the authorities would have on US relations with Europe,when we have all too readily in the past handed over suspects of white collar crime to the far more serious from Raoul Weil to Neil Entwistle. I'm afraid that there is no way out:not even the lame excuse of the double jeapordy law,which only applies to a case which has already been heard in the US courts.

Is convicted murderess Amanda Knox a monster,participating in a killing for such a trivial reason as squabbling over who did what domestic chores? The phrase coined by US political theorist Hannah Arendt "the banality of evil" springs to mind,whether we are dealing with one violent act or the mass murder of millions,and before upstanding citizens reject this as a hyperbolic comparison it was unfortunate that one of Ms. Knox's short stories involved a theme of "the Nazi inside of me". Maybe she could produce a different subject matter in any future tales on her creative writing stories at the University of Washington where she is for the meantime still a student,whilst higher authorities debate whether the balance of punishment and rehabilitation has been struck,and whether some compromise settlement might be reached involving the relinquishment of Ms.Knox's $4 million book deal,which in the light of yesterday's verdict can now only be seen as blood money.http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/...ht=amanda+knox

[Janice]

I didn't catch the Amanda Knox case from the beginning, and then didn't follow it. All I know is that her roommate was murdered (shot?), and that Amanda and a guy have been held responsible. This happened in Italy. They were convicted, had it overturned and now convicted again? Not sure if I have that right.

Does the U.S. have any interest or legal stake in the case?

Can anyone recommend a documentary on youtube or somewhere or a written piece that offers a non bias telling of the story? Thanks.