MILAN (AP) — An Italian
court that convicted Amanda Knox in her roommate's 2007 murder said in lengthy
reasoning made public Tuesday that the victim's wounds indicate multiple
aggressors, and that the two exchange students fought over money on the night of
the murder.
The appellate court in
Florence explained the January guilty verdicts against the American student and
her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito in a 337-page document that examined
both the evidence and the motive.
The court said that a
third person convicted in the murder, Rudy Hermann Guede, did not act alone,
and cited the nature of the victim's Wounds. It noted that at least two knives
were used to attack 21 years old Meredith Kercher and that there was also
finger-prints on her body, indicating she had been restrained.
The court said there was
ample evidence of a bad relationship between the two roommates, despite Knox's
attempts to play down differences in court, and cited statements by Guede under
police questioning that Kercher had blamed Knox for taking money from the
British student's room.
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File photos combo shows, from left; Italian
student Raffaele Sollecito, slain 21-year-old British woman Meredith …
|
"It is a matter of
fact that at a certain point in the evening events accelerated, the English
girl was attacked by Amanda Marie Knox, by Raffaele Sollecito, who was backing up his girlfriend,
and by Rudy Hermann Guede, and constrained within her own room," the
document said.
The court said it was
not necessary for all of the assailants to have the same motive, and that the
murder was not attributable to a sex game gone awry, as it was out of Kercher's
character to have ever consented to such activity.
The release of the
court's reasoning opens the verdict to
an appeal back to the Supreme Court of Cassation. If it confirms the
convictions, a long extradition fight for Knox is expected. She has been in the
United States since 2011 when her earlier conviction was overturned.
Kercher was found dead
in a pool of blood in the apartment she and Knox shared in the town of Perugia,
on Nov. 2, 2007. Her throat had been slashed and she had been sexually
assaulted. Knox and Sollecito were arrested four days later and served four
years in prison before an appeals court acquitted them in 2011. Knox returned
to the U.S.
Italy's high court later
threw out that acquittal and ordered a new trial, resulting in January's
conviction. The court sentenced Knox to 28 and 1/5 years in prison and
Sollecito to 25 years.
The courts have cast
wildly different versions of events. Knox and Sollecito were convicted of
murder and sexual assault in the first trial based on DNA evidence, confused
alibis and Knox's false accusation against a Congolese bar owner, for which she
was also convicted of slander.
Then an appeals court in
Perugia dismantled the murder verdicts, criticizing the "building
blocks" of the conviction, including DNA evidence deemed unreliable by new
experts, and lack of motive.
That acquittal was scathingly
vacated in March 2013 by Italy's highest court, which ordered a new appeals
trial to examine evidence and hear testimony it said had been improperly
omitted by the Perugia appeals court, and to redress what it identified as
lapses in logic.
The third defendant,
Guede, was convicted in a separate trial of sexually assaulting and stabbing
Kercher. His 16-year sentence reduced on appeal from 30 years was upheld in 2010 by Italy's highest court,
which said he had not acted alone. Guede, a drug dealer who fled Italy after
the killing and was extradited from Germany, acknowledges that he was in
Kercher's room the night she died but denies killing her.
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