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The murder of Meredith Kercher occurred in Perugia, Italy, on 1 November 2007. The following day, police discovered the body of the 21-year-old British university exchange student in the upstairs flat that she shared with three other young women. She was found lying partially clothed under a duvet in her locked bedroom, with blood on the floor, bed and walls. Forensic pathologists concluded strangulation had been attempted, and then her neck was stabbed, causing fatal bleeding. Her body had 40 bruises and scratches, plus knife wounds on the neck and hands, and there was evidence of sexual assault. Two credit cards and 300 euros were missing, and her two mobile phones (for local and UK) were found in a nearby garden.

On 6 November 2007, police arrested two suspects: Amanda Knox, an American student, and Raffaele Sollecito, an Italian student who had been Knox's boyfriend for two weeks. Both students maintain that they are innocent.

On 20 November 2007, based on DNA and fingerprint evidence found near the victim's body, Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivorian long-term resident of Perugia, was arrested in Germany. He was subsequently extradited to Italy. Guede elected for a fast-track trial and was convicted on 28 October 2008 of the sexual assault and murder of Kercher and sentenced to 30 years in prison. This sentence was reduced to 16 years on appeal. Guede also maintains that he is innocent and is seeking a second appeal.

The trial of Knox and Sollecito began on 16 January 2009. On 4 December 2009, both were found guilty of murder, sexual violence and other charges. Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison, while Sollecito received 25 years. In April 2010, Knox and Sollecito both filed appeals against their convictions, and the prosecution also filed an appeal, seeking life terms for both defendants. Under Italian law, all three defendants are considered innocent until the appeals process has been concluded.

The case has been extensively reported in Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States. The case is controversial in the U.S., with claims in the media and among various supporters of Knox and Sollecito that they were unjustly convicted.

Meredith Kercher

Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher, known to her friends as "Mez", was born on 28 December 1985 in Southwark, London, England, and lived in Coulsdon, South London. John Kercher, herfather, is a freelance journalist and her mother Arline Kercher is a housewife, born in India. She had two older brothers, John and Lyle, and an older sister, Stephanie. Kercher attended the Old Palace School in Croydon and then the University of Leeds. As part of the ERASMUS student exchange programme, she went to the University of Perugia to complete her degree course in European Studies. She appeared in a music video for singer Kristian Leontiou's song "Some Say" shortly before her death.

In Perugia, she lived in a flat on the upper floor of a house at Via della Pergola 7, sharing with two Italian women. Amanda Knox moved in when she came to study at the University for Foreigners. The house was on an open hillside below the city centre, near a motorway on the edge of town. Kercher was murdered in the apartment on the evening of 1 November 2007. The pathologists put her time of death at around 23:00.

On the night of 5 November 2007 Kercher's friends in Perugia held a candlelight vigil, in her memory, on the steps of the town's cathedral.

Kercher's funeral service was held on 14 December 2007 at Croydon Parish Church, with more than 300 people in attendance. She has since been awarded a posthumous degree by the University of Leeds.

Events surrounding the murder

On 1 November 2007, Kercher had spent the early evening with some friends, watching a film and eating a home-made pizza. Just before 21:00, she left with a friend to walk home. The two parted company near her friend's flat (who testified arriving at 20:55), and Kercher walked the 500 yards (460 m) towards the house alone. At 22:00, her UK mobile phone dialled her London bank without the required international prefix. The bank number was the first entry in her phone index. At 22:13, her UK phone received an incoming message, through a different mobile station shared with an adjacent neighbourhood, but Kercher never answered.

Meanwhile, Knox and Sollecito were at his apartment Via Garibaldi, but both turned off their mobile phones at about 20:30 and their whereabouts until the next day are unconfirmed.

An elderly neighbour heard a chilling scream on the night of the murder. Soon after, she heard running on the metal staircase which led to Kercher's apartment and then running through the leaves going in the other direction. She concluded that these were the footsteps of at least two people.

The next day, 2 November, at 12:07 pm, Knox called Kercher's UK phone, then called a housemate saying the front door of the cottage had been left open and there was some blood. She also called her mother, although it was around 4 am in Seattle. At 12:35 the Italian Post and Communications Police came to investigate the discovery of two mobile phones in a nearby garden, one phone registered to one of the housemates and the other to Kercher. Knox and Sollecito were standing outside and told them that the premises had been burgled, that a window had been broken and that there were drops of blood in several rooms. At 12:51 and 12:54, Sollecito made 2 calls to the Carabinieri military police, reporting a possible burglary.

The police investigated the upstairs flat, which they concluded, apart from Kercher's bedroom and the nearby bathroom, had been thoroughly cleaned. There was blood in several rooms, a bloody footprint in the smaller bathroom, an unflushed toilet in the large bathroom, broken glass in the third bedroom, and blood near Kercher's locked bedroom. The lower left pane of one of the bedroom windows had been smashed, with broken glass near a large stone in a bag on the floor, and the room appeared ransacked. The washing machine was found to be on final cycle with Kercher's clothes inside, but not the clothes she was wearing when attacked. At around 1 pm, the housemate whose room had been ransacked arrived and said that nothing had been taken.

The door to Kercher's room was forced open and the police found Kercher lying beneath a duvet "soaked in blood", with pools and smears of blood around the room. The others were told not to enter, as the area was secured for investigation.

Police investigation

The Carabinieri police attended the Perugia apartment, and the forensic lab in Rome was contacted to process the scene.

Knox and Sollecito were interviewed several times by the police on the day the murder was discovered and the following two days. On 5 November 2007, Knox voluntarily accompanied Sollecito to the police station where he gave a statement, in the course of which he said that he did not know for sure that Knox was with him on the night of the murder. The police then decided to question Knox and began the interview at 23.00 that evening. Knox was interviewed twice during the night of 5–6 November, firstly by the judicial police and then, later, in the presence of a prosecutor. During these interviews, Knox made statements implicating Patrick Lumumba, the owner of a bar-restaurant named Le Chic, at which she occasionally worked. She said that she had accompanied Lumumba to Kercher's house and had been in the kitchen and heard screams while Lumumba committed the murder. The contents of these statements was widely reported in the press at the time. Knox later claimed that both statements were made under duress and that she had been coerced into implicating Lumumba: she said that she had been struck twice on the back of the head during the questioning, called a "stupid liar" and when asked did she hear screams she had replied no. This is denied by the police who have now responded with a defamation charge. The conduct of these interviews remains an area of controversy in the case, with Knox's lawyer, when summing up at the end of her trial, stating that they lasted a total of 53 hours, a stressful and frightening experience for Knox.

Knox was formally arrested later on the morning of 6 November. Some time afterwards she made a written note to the police, explaining that she was confused when she made the earlier statements, saying "I'm very doubtful of the verity of my statements because they were made under the pressures of stress, shock and extreme exhaustion". However, she still seemed to incriminate Lumumba, saying: "I stand by my statements that I made last night about events that could have taken place in my home with Patrik , but I want to make very clear that these events seem more unreal to me that what I said before, that I stayed at Raffaele's house." She went on to say "I see Patrik as the murderer, but the way the truth feels in my mind, there is no way for me to have known because I don't remember FOR SURE if I was at my house that night."

This written note was admissible at the trial of Knox and Sollecito. However, following a ruling by the Court of Cassation, the statements made to police during the night of 5–6 November were not: one because she was being interviewed as a witness and the other because no lawyer was present. Nevertheless, the judge (at the Knox trial) ruled that both statements were admissible in Lumumba's civil case against Knox, which was being tried in the same court at the same time as the criminal trial of Knox and Sollecito.

Lumumba was arrested on 6 November 2007 as a result of Knox's statements. He was detained for two weeks until the arrest of Guede. Initially doubts about his alibi were reported in the press, but ultimately he was completely exonerated.

Evidence

The body was found on the floor of Kercher's bedroom, with blood pools, smears, finger streaks, drips, blood spatter and footprints in various locations in the room. The pathology report found that Kercher's carotid artery had not been ruptured in the attack, and that she died a relatively slow and agonising death, as the superior thyroid artery had been severed by a stab wound and she inhaled her own blood. Her hyoid bone was broken, and she had suffered bruising to her vagina and perineum.

The forensic pathologist initially concluded that the pattern of bruises, defensive wounds, cuts, and stab wounds (about 40 in total) could not indicate whether one or multiple attackers had been present. The pathologist concluded that strangulation was attempted before the stab wounds were made. The forensic evidence indicated that the death occurred beside the wardrobe, but that the body had been further disrobed and moved near the bed, some time after death, when some blood patterns had set. Her clothes were placed separately between the body and the doorway.

Rudy Guede's fingerprint left in Kercher's blood was matched to a print in Guede's file at the register of foreign residents at Perugia town hall. Guede matched a bloody left-hand print on a pillow found under the victim's back. His DNA was found in many locations in the bedroom: on and inside Kercher's body; on her shirt and bra; mixed with Kercher's blood splatter; and on Kercher's handbag.

Guede's DNA was also found on toilet paper in one of the bathrooms but no trace of his DNA was found in the bedroom where the window had been broken and the contents ransacked.

Other forensic evidence included an analysis of the metal clasp of Kercher's bra (retrieved in a second forensic search on 18 December 2007), which revealed small traces of DNA matching Sollecito and three other unidentified people.

The police concluded, that the apparent break-in at the flat had been staged, partly because the window seemed to have been broken after the room had been ransacked.

Chemical analysis revealed slight footprints in the house, which prosecutors said matched the feet of Knox and Sollecito. Both admitted to having been in the house the day after the murder, and claimed that this was when they stepped in the blood. Knox's DNA was found mixed with Kercher's blood in the footprints and elsewhere in the apartment.

Knox's DNA was found on two of the knives kept in Sollecito's kitchen drawer for cooking, and a small amount of Kercher's DNA was found on one of the two.

There was no forensic evidence, such as DNA, hair, fibre, blood or skin, directly indicating that Knox had been in the bedroom where Meredith Kercher was sexually assaulted and murdered. The only fingerprints of Knox which were found anywhere in the apartment were those on a glass in the kitchen sink. Knox's fingerprints were not found in Kercher's bedroom, nor her own bedroom.

Defendants

Rudy Guédé background

Rudy Hermann Guédé (in English, usually 'Guede'), was born in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, in 1986, but moved to Perugia at the age of five with his father, Pacome Roger Guédé, who worked as a labourer, there, in the 1990s. His father left Italy when Guede was 16, and he was informally adopted by the family of a wealthy local businessman, Paolo Caporali. Guede acquired joint Italian nationality, and he sporadically studied accounting and hotelkeeping. However, he spent more and more time in the big-city nightlife of Milan. His aunt lived in nearby Lecco and Guede sometimes worked in Milan bars. He returned occasionally to Perugia to mingle with the 36,000-student community. Guede played basketball for the local team, which Caporali sponsored. He was a natural and played basketball for the Perugia youth team in the 2004–2005 season.

In the weeks leading up to the murder, Guede was associated with three criminal events, none of which led to a prosecution. On 27 September 2007, a Perugia bartender heard a noise downstairs in his home and found Guede wandering around with a large knife. He recognised Guede from his work in a nightclub and confronted him, and Guede ran away. On Saturday, 27 October (5 days before the murder) the head of a nursery school arrived early in the morning with a locksmith to fix the school's front door. There she found Guede standing inside her office, and she called the police. The police questioned and searched Guede and found a laptop and mobile phone, plus a large knife that the owner claimed was stolen from the school kitchen. The laptop and phone had been stolen from a Perugia law office at the weekend of 13 October in a burglary where an upstairs window had been smashed with a large rock and the thief had disabled the alarm system. Guede claimed that he bought the stolen items from an unknown man at Milan railway station.

During the week of the murder, Guede was staying in a house a few streets from Sollecito's flat on Via del Canerino, in Perugia. A few days after the murder, on hearing news reports, Guede fled Perugia by train to Germany. Interpol traced a computer which he used in Germany to access Facebook in order to reply to a message from a Daily Telegraph journalist. In his message, Guede said that he was aware that he was a suspect and wanted to clear his name. On 20 November 2007, the German transport police arrested Guede on a train near Mainz, Germany, where he was apprehended for travelling without a ticket. When questioned, he claimed that he was on his way back to Italy to give himself up. He was extradited back to Italy on 6 December 2007.

Amanda Knox background

Amanda Marie Knox was born in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. in 1987. Her parents were divorced when she was two.

At the time of Kercher's murder, Knox had been studying at the University of Washington, in Seattle, Washington, and was in Perugia attending the University for Foreigners for one year, studying Italian, German and creative writing. Some media reports referred to Knox as "Foxy Knoxy", a nickname she had been given for skills on the football pitch as a child and was used by herself as a nickname for her MySpace account.

She stayed in the bedroom next to Kercher in the upstairs flat in Perugia. In her short time in Italy, Knox knew Guede only casually. Knox met her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito at a classical music concert eight days before the murder.

Knox admitted to using marijuana on occasion, including the evening on which Kercher's murder occurred.

She was arrested on the morning of 6 November 2007.

Raffaele Sollecito background

Raffaele Sollecito was born on 26 March 1984, in Giovinazzo, Bari, Italy. He is from an affluent family and his father is a urologist. At the time of the murder, he was nearing the completion of a degree in computer engineering at the University of Perugia, which he finished while awaiting trial in prison. He had been the boyfriend of Knox for about two weeks.

Sollecito collected knives and swords and always carried a flick-knife in his pocket. When he was initially questioned by police, a flick knife was found in his possession, but was ruled out as a possible murder weapon.

Sollecito claimed that he was in his flat and spent the evening using his computer on the night of the murder. Like Knox, Sollecito admits to having smoked marijuana on the day of the murder but said that he is unable to remember whether Knox was with him on the evening of the murder.

He did not know Guede and claimed never to have heard of his name prior to news reports about the murder.

Rudy Guédé trial and appeal

Fast track trial

Guede elected for a "fast-track" trial which began on 16 October 2008, presided over by Judge Paolo Micheli. Under the fast-track option, a defendant gives up the right to test the evidence in a full trial, in exchange for a more lenient sentence, if found guilty. The trial was held in closed session, with no reporters present. He was charged with murder, sexual assault and theft of 300 euros (~US$440), two credit cards and two mobile phones.

Guede's account was that he had met Kercher the night before the murder at a Halloween party which she had attended with her friends. Kercher, he claimed, spent the latter part of Halloween with him, rather than continuing on with her friends. He said that he and Kercher had scheduled a date for the next evening at her home.

On the night of the murder he claimed to have gone to Kercher's home, waiting outside until she arrived and let him in. He claimed that they talked in the kitchen and she then went into her bedroom and discovered that money had been taken from her room. Guede claimed that he calmed Kercher so that she did not phone her flat-mates or parents about the missing money. He claimed that he became intimate with the victim in her bedroom but, feeling sick from a bad kebab, he left the room to use the toilet.

He said that he was listening to music on his iPod, might have heard the doorbell ring and did hear Kercher scream. He claimed that he emerged from the bathroom to see a man whom he did not know holding a knife over the victim while she lay on the floor of her bedroom.

Guede claimed that he struggled with the man and that his hand was cut by a knife. The existence of a cut was confirmed by the police who detained him in Germany, but its cause was not provable. He claimed the man then fled, saying: "He is black. If a black man is found, then a black man will be found guilty. Let's go". Guede claimed to have used bath towels to stem the flow of blood from Kercher's neck and to wipe up blood. He claimed that he then held Kercher as she gave her last utterance: "A-F", which he wrote on the wall in her blood. He claimed that he left Kercher fully clothed, with the duvet and pillow on the bed and that, in haste and panic, he touched almost everything in the victim's room.

Without calling the police or an ambulance for Kercher (he explained that there was no mobile phone nearby and that he was confused), Guede fled, leaving the front door unlocked. He went home to wash the victim's blood off his body and clothing. Later, he went out to the Domus and Shamrock nightclubs.

Guede's claims about having planned a date with Kercher were dismissed by Judge Micheli, because Guede had changed the details of where he claimed to have met Kercher, and because friends who had accompanied Kercher for Halloween testified that no meeting between them had taken place. Details about Kercher's Halloween activities had been announced on worldwide news and Internet websites prior to Guede's arrest. Micheli also noted that because Guede insisted the duvet and single pillow remained on the bed (and he didn't move them to the floor), Guede could not explain his Nike blood shoe print on the pillow under the body, with his bloody hand print.

On 28 October 2008, Guede was found guilty of the murder and sexual assault of Kercher and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Appeal

Guede had not initially implicated Knox and Sollecito in the crime and, in November 2007, he stated during a phone call to a friend, which was being monitored by the police, that Knox was not present at the scene of the murder.

At his appeal, however, Guede claimed that, while in the bathroom, he heard Knox's voice arguing with Kercher about some missing money in the bedroom. Guede claimed to have heard a piercing scream and then rushed to the bedroom where he saw a man, resembling Sollecito, running away. Guede said that when he glanced out of the window, he saw the silhouette of Knox leaving the house. The appeal judges theorized that Guede chose to keep quiet as long as he could about Knox and Sollecito's involvement because, had he accused them, he would have exposed himself to retaliatory statements.

On 22 December 2009, the Corte d'Appello upheld Guede's convictions but reduced his sentence to 16 years. In March 2010, the Corte d'Appello issued a detailed report of its ruling. The judges explained that they reduced Guede's sentence by 14 years because he was the only one of the three defendants to apologise to the Kercher family for his actions. The reduced sentence of 16 years also takes account of Guede's option for a fast-track trial, which grants an automatic reduction of any sentence by one third.

Guede continues to assert that he is innocent and will pursue a second and final appeal to the Court of Cassation.

Subsequent events

In February 2010, one of Guede's fellow prisoners, Mario Alessi, made a sworn statement to Sollecito's defence team that Guede had told him that Knox and Sollecito were not involved, and that a second person had been present at the scene of the murder. However, Guede has denied Alessi's claims and stated that he has never talked to anyone about his trial. Guede announced his intention to sue Mario Alessi for defamation. Lucia Musti, the Parma Prosecutor involved with the trial of Alessi, has said that in her opinion Alessi, who is currently serving life imprisonment for the killing of a small child, might just be seeking a way to obtain benefits and that she considers Alessi to be untrustworthy.

Knox and Sollecito trial and appeals

Committal hearings

The indictment of Knox and Sollecito was also decided and issued during the Guede trial in October 2008 and was also held in a closed court session before Judge Micheli.

From a detailed analysis of the very large number and positions of bloodstains in the flat, and the cuts and bruises sustained by Kercher, Micheli concluded that Kercher had been sexually assaulted and then murdered by multiple attackers. He also concluded that the apparent break-in had been faked and that one or more people returned to the crime scene, rearranged the body and staged the fake a break-in, some time after the murder. He concluded the only people with a motive for faking a break-in would be those who had keys to the apartment. Judge Micheli also believed that it was suspicious that Sollecito called the Carabinieri military police, saying that a burglary had occurred but "nothing had been taken" when other roommates had not yet returned to check their rooms for missing items. He also found suspicious Knox's claim to have taken a shower in a room with blood on the floor.

Following the court session, Sollecito’s lawyer Luca Maori described the prosecution's theory on the motive for the murder as being part of a "satanic rite" and this was widely reported in the press, some of whom linked this with the fact that the murder occurred on the day after Halloween. However, Judge Micheli dismissed this motive as fantasy and made it clear that the committal for trial of the two suspects was not based on this theory.

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito trial

The trial of Knox and Sollecito began on 16 January 2009, with much attention from the media. They were charged with murder, sexual assault, simulating a crime (burglary), carrying a knife, and theft of 300 euros (~US$440), two credit cards and two mobile phones. The presiding judge was Giancarlo Massei, with deputy judge Beatrice Cristiani. Six lay judges joined them to complete the panel convened to hear the case and determine the verdicts.

The head prosecutor in the trial was Guiliano Mignini. Mignini has since been convicted of abuse of office and the bugging of journalists in relation to a separate case on 22 January 2010. The assistant prosecutor was Manuela Comodi. Knox was represented by attorneys Luciano Ghirga and Carlo Dalla Vedova. Sollecito was defended by attorney Giulia Bongiorno.

On 16 January 2009, the trial began before the Corte d'Assise of Perugia. Hearings were held nearly every two weeks (except for a summer break) until 4 December 2009. Rudy Guede attended the trial, but declined to testify. During the first session, judge Massei rejected a request by the Kercher family to hold the trial behind closed doors. He ruled that the trial would be public, but with closed sessions to be decided on a case-by-case basis.

The case was opened for the prosecution, with cross-examination by the defence, involving witnesses from the Postal police, Kercher's housemates and their friends, to establish the events leading up to the murder and on the day the body was found. The prosecution sought to prove that the break-in at the murder scene had been staged. Evidence was presented that shards of glass from the broken window were found on top of a computer and clothes that had been strewn around the room, suggesting that the window had been broken after the room had been ransacked. A room-mate testified she had left her room tidy, and nothing major had been stolen.

The prosecution presented a range of forensic evidence which included analysis of the bloody footprints found at the crime scene. In particular, a footprint, believed to be a woman's, was found under the body. It did not match Kercher's shoes but was the right size to be Knox's, although it had not been matched to any of her actual footwear. Another bloody footprint at the apartment was claimed to match Sollecito's foot. Forensic evidence was produced regarding Kercher's bra strap, with Sollecito's DNA on the clasp, and the kitchen knife retrieved from Sollecito's apartment which had Knox's DNA on the handle and a minute trace of Kercher's DNA on the blade. The prosecution claimed that this was the murder weapon.

Police evidence was presented to show that Knox and Sollecito did not have provable alibis for the time of the murder. Sollecito maintained that he was at his apartment, using his computer, but police computer analysts told the trial that Sollecito's computer had not been used between 21:10 on the evening of the murder, and 05:32 the next morning. Knox has maintained that she was with Sollecito at the time, but in his statement to police, he said that he could not remember if she was with him or not. Their version of events was further contradicted by a homeless man, who testified that he had seen Knox and Sollecito "chatting animatedly" on a basketball court, within sight of Kercher's house, "around five times" between 9.30pm and midnight on the night of the murder. A Perugia shopkeeper gave evidence that Knox had gone to her supermarket at 07:45 on the morning after the murder, at when a time when Knox was, according to her own account, still at home with Sollecito.

In June 2009, the defence lawyers began to present their case, and Knox testified for the first time on 12 June 2009, pleading her innocence. She told the court that she had been with Sollecito in his apartment on the night of the murder. The defence pointed out that, despite having put forward several different theories, the prosecution had produced no convincing evidence of a motive for murder. Knox testified that she regarded Kercher as her friend and had no reason to kill her.

The defence sought to show that Guede could have been a lone killer. Two Perugia lawyers and a school director testified on June 26-27, 2009, that Rudy Guede had been caught with a large (16-inch, 40-cm) stolen knife inside a closed Milan school on 27 October 2007 (5 days before the murder) with a laptop PC reported stolen 14 October 2007 and a mobile phone from a Perugia law office burgled with a rock breaking an upstairs window. One of the solicitors stated that Guede had appeared outside the law office 2 days later, and Guede claimed that he had bought both the stolen PC and phone at a railway station in Milan. The school director testified that a small amount of money was also missing when she found Guede looking inside a cabinet in the school office, following his alleged break-in. An expert witness for the defence testified that the window of Kercher's flat had been broken from the outside, and presented a video of stones shattering similar windows (but without shutters). thumb|left|Knox & Sollecito, in court on 3 December 2009, 1 day before the verdict was read.

The defence challenged the prosecution's DNA evidence, suggesting that the quantity of DNA matched to Kercher on the "double DNA" knife was too small to be reliably tested and that, in any case, that knife only matched one of the three wounds in Kercher's neck. The bra clasp had been logged, but not collected, in the initial police crime scene investigation, and the defence argued that it could have been contaminated with Sollecito's DNA some time before it was finally tested. Furthermore, the defence pointed out that there was not a single piece of Knox's DNA found in Kercher's bedroom, where the crime had been committed.

Towards the end of November, the prosecution and defence began summing up their cases. On 4 December 2009, Knox was convicted by the Corte d'Assise of Perugia of all counts except theft and was sentenced to 26 years in prison. Sollecito was found guilty of all five charges attributed to him and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. The decision was delivered by the presiding judge at around 11:45 pm local time, following 13 hours of deliberation.

Judges' report

On 4 March 2010, the Corte d'Assise of Perugia released a 427-page report, detailing the Court's rationale in reaching its verdicts. In its report, the Court determined that Rudy Guede, not Knox or Sollecito, was the main instigator of the violent attack against Meredith Kercher and that Knox and Sollecito had acted without malice or premeditation in their involvement with the killing. The Court found that the murder was "without planning, without any animosity or grudge against the victim", but that Knox and Sollecito, influenced by drugs, had "actively participated" in helping Guede to sexually assault Kercher.

The panel of judges apparently rejected some of the more lurid prosecution claims, especially those based on Knox's behaviour, such as her cart-wheeling in the police station in the days after the murder: instead, the judges' decision was based on the forensic evidence presented. In particular, the Court concluded that one bloody footprint found on the bathroom floormat belonged to Sollecito, while a shoeprint in a bedroom was made by Knox. The judges concluded that Knox and Sollecito had stabbed Kercher in the neck using two different knives, but after the murder they had covered the body with a duvet in "a sort of repentence for what had been done".

The Court further believed that Knox and Sollecito had staged the apparent break-in at the house to make it appear that Kercher had been killed by an intruder. They went on to say they believed that Knox had attempted to shift the blame by falsely accusing Patrick Lumumba, in order to "put the investigators onto the wrong track" despite her having "no motive for spite, enmity or revenge toward him which could justify such a serious accusation".

Filing of appeals

On 15 April 2010, the prosecution filed its appeal against what they regard as the leniency of Knox's and Sollecito's sentences. Their grounds for appeal were that the post-verdict judges' report had said that the murder was committed for purely casual reasons, and they claim that this would call for the maximum penalty of life. The prosecution had sought life sentences in the original trial.

On 17 April 2010, the lawyers for Knox filed an over 300 page appeal, seeking to overturn her conviction. In their appeal, a new witness has been found who they claim can prove that Knox and Sollecito were not involved in Kercher's killing. The appeal also challenges the DNA evidence in the case, and seeks to have an additional analysis of the DNA evidence, that was not allowed during the first trial, to be introduced during the second trial at the Court of Appeals. The defence intend to repudiate all points of the sentence, including re-examining Knox's questioning by police (where they claim she was denied her basic rights), the DNA evidence and the blood traces detected with luminol. The defence also claim that the prosecution has failed to deliver to them all the paperwork and documentation related to the forensic testing.

The lawyers for Raffaele Sollecito also filed a lengthy appeal of his conviction comprising over 270 pages.

The appeal will proceed as a trial de novo (new trial) which is expected to take place in the autumn of 2010 before the Appellate Court of Assizes, presided over by Judge Emanuele Medoro.

Controversial aspects of the case

Claims of police mistreatment

According to Knox, during the night of 5 and 6 November 2007, she was questioned first by a large group of police officers and then by prosecutor Mignini. Knox testified that she was subjected to a great deal of pressure and intimidation, was called a "stupid liar" and was hit on the head twice. According to Knox, the police told her that they had solid evidence that she was at the scene of the murder and that her inability to remember being there might be due to a traumatic mental block interfering with her memory. Knox claimed that she was pressured, with the threat of 30 years in prison, to recall suggested details. According to Knox, that pressuring led her to make the statements placing herself at the murder scene and implicating Patrick Lumumba as the murderer of Kercher. Knox had no lawyer present to assist her and claimed that she had been dissuaded from seeking an attorney. Since by 5:45 am Knox was a suspect, Italian law prohibited her interrogation without her attorney present, so that part of her interrogation was unlawful. When describing the event to her family, Knox told them: "I've never been so scared in my life."

Some hours later, Knox retracted some of her statements. She explained in a written note that the intimidation she had experienced during the interrogation had caused her fear and confusion. Knox wrote in part:"In regards to this "confession" that I made last night, I want to make clear that I'm very doubtful of the verity of my statements because they were made under the pressures of stress, shock and extreme exhaustion. Not only was I told I would be arrested and put in jail for 30 years, but I was also hit in the head when I didn't remember a fact correctly. I understand that the police are under a lot of stress, so I understand the treatment I received."

A female police officer testifying at the trial denied that Knox was pressured, and said, she had questioned Knox "firmly but politely." She also said that Knox had been given chamomile tea and cakes from a vending machine, and later had breakfast in the police station, over the course of the questioning.

In January 2010, Knox and her legal team were informed that due to her testimony at the trial she would be charged with defamation of the police and face a further criminal trial. If found guilty, the penalty is a fine and/or a prison sentence of between two and six years. The prosecutor and/or police are also prosecuting, suing or investigating (or have threatened to do so) both of Knox's parents and other individuals or news organizations for making statements the prosecutor or police consider defamatory.

The double DNA knife

The kitchen knife with Knox's DNA found on the handle and Kercher's on the blade, continues to be a major source of controversy. Firstly, Knox and Sollecito's defence teams asserted that this knife was not the lethal weapon because it did not match two of the three wounds on Kercher's neck. However, a forensic evidence expert for the prosecution testified that it was compatible with one of the wounds on Kercher's neck, but that two other wounds might have been inflicted by a different weapon; This was the view taken by the trial judges.

Secondly, although it matched Kercher's DNA, it tested negative for blood.

Thirdly, the defence pointed out that Knox's DNA would normally be on the knife because she used knives for cooking at Sollecito's apartment. The form of DNA test used to identify Kercher's DNA was a "low copy DNA", which some experts regard as unreliable.

DNA disputes about bra clasp

The Rome forensic lab made an analysis of the metal clasp of Kercher's severed bra strap (retrieved in a second forensic search on 18 December 2007), which revealed small traces of DNA matching Sollecito and at least three other unknown persons.

The defense argued that the DNA on the metal clasp, which had been severed from the bra, could have been contaminated when it was moved on the floor, six weeks after the murder, or in the forensic laboratory in Rome. The judge at the trial of Rudy Guede acknowledged that the DNA sample was considered small, but described the claim of contamination at the laboratory as making no sense, since there was no material from which such contamination could have come, and so "the risk would have been the loss of traces found there, not the risk of somehow discovering new traces".

Also, two witnesses testified that, when the body was found, one of the postal-police officers immediately stepped past Sollecito at the doorway, into the room (without shoe-covers) to check for life-signs under the quilt (although during the trial, the officer denied such entry), and the bra clasp had been moved about 1m (39 inches) across the floor when recovered 47 days later.

Claim of bleaching of the crime scene

The police originally claimed that the flat of Kercher and Knox had been cleaned with bleach, in an attempt to destroy evidence. However, blood smears, drops, and blood footprints were found in several rooms of the flat, including the entrance area, Filomena's room, Kercher's hallway, Kercher's room, and the nearby bathroom. During the Knox-Sollecito trial, several witnesses talked about the possible use of bleach. Police found two bottles of bleach at Sollecito's apartment. Sollecito's former housekeeper testified at trial that she had asked Sollecito to buy bleach months earlier for general housekeeping purposes and that when she stopped working for Sollecito in September 2007, there were one and a half bottles of bleach at his house. Sollecito's current housekeeper also testified that there was no smell of bleach in his apartment during those days in early November 2007.

Support for Knox

Of the three defendants, Knox's conviction has been unique in building a significant lobby of support, mainly in the United States. Knox, her family and various supporters maintain that she has been unjustly convicted.

Knox's family's PR campaign

In order to counter what they perceived as a media bias against her, Knox's family engaged the services of David Marriott, of "Gogerty Stark Marriott", a Seattle-based public relations firm . Marriott is a former television news reporter and has been the press secretary for a former Seattle mayor, as well as having run four communications consulting firms.

Marriott ensured that journalists in Perugia in the early stages of the case could only get access to the Knox family if they gave guarantees about positive coverage. As time went on the family opted to speak primarily to the American TV networks, often in exchange for airfare and hotel bills.

Senator Maria Cantwell's accusations of anti-Americanism

On 4 December 2009, the day the verdict was announced in the criminal trial, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell of the State of Washington released a statement expressing her concerns:

I am saddened by the verdict and I have serious questions about the Italian justice system and whether anti-Americanism tainted this trial. The prosecution did not present enough evidence for an impartial jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms. Knox was guilty. Italian jurors were not sequestered and were allowed to view highly negative news coverage about Ms. Knox. Other flaws in the Italian justice system on display in this case included the harsh treatment of Ms. Knox following her arrest; negligent handling of evidence by investigators; and pending charges of misconduct against one of the prosecutors stemming from another murder trial."

Senator Cantwell indicated her intention to seek assistance from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Secretary Clinton herself has not commented on the case, but a spokesman for the US Department of State stated at a press conference on 7 December 2009 that the State Department has followed this case very closely and will continue to follow the case during the appeal process. He stated that the State Department's role is to ensure that any American citizen is treated fairly, according to local law. He added that, in this case, "It is still in the early days but...we haven't received any indications necessarily that Italian law was not followed". He also stated "This is an ongoing process" and "It does not mean that we are not going to have some kind of statement as the process goes forward." The State Department stated its intention to hold ongoing discussions about the case with Senator Cantwell and to continue staying in contact with the Knox family to monitor the situation during the appeal process.

John Kercher, Meredith's father, described the suggestion of anti-American bias during the trial as "ludicrous", saying: "The Americans seem completely ignorant to the fact that there was a mass of evidence other than the DNA. I don't blame them because they are going on what they have seen and read. But it is upsetting for my family".

Friends of Amanda

"Friends of Amanda" is an organisation whose description of themselves is; "Friends of Amanda is a group of people who recognize that Amanda is innocent. We are not affiliated with her family, and no one is paying us. We simply want to see justice." Their membership, constitution and source of funding is not stated, but their spokesperson is Anne Bremner. Its supporters include Paul Ciolino, a Chicago investigator, and Douglas Preston, who wrote The Monster of Florence, a book about an Italian serial killer case.

Their website provides their views of the facts of the case, together with a "media kit" providing briefings on their side of the story for journalists, and provides addresses and links to help supporters to lobby U.S. senators and the U.S. President. The group has also organised fundraising events to contribute to the Knox family's legal and travel bills.

Civil actions

Lawsuit filed by Kercher's family

Kercher's family filed a civil suit for $33 million (approximately £20 million or €22 million) against anyone found guilty of the murder.

Patrick Lumumba's lawsuit against Knox

Patrick Lumumba, the man Knox originally accused of murdering Kercher, sued Knox for more than $500,000 (approximately £300,000 or €330,000) in damages, but the outcome of the civil action was that the court ordered Knox to pay Lumumba €40,000 (approximately $60,000 or £36,000) compensation. Lumumba also pursued compensation from the Italian authorities for unjust imprisonment and the loss of his business and, in December 2009, a court awarded €8,000 (approximately equivalent to $12,000 or £7,200 as of December 2009) in damages. In February 2010, Lumumba announced that he would be taking his claim for compensation from the Italian authorities to the European Court of Human Rights.

Lawsuit filed by Amanda Knox

In March of 2010, Knox won a lawsuit against Fiorenza Sarzanini, director of Corriere della Sera Paolo Mieli, RCS Quotidiani S.p.A. and RCS Libri S.p.A. magazines, for violation of her privacy and illegal publication of Court documents. Sarzanini had written and Mieli published the book "Amanda e gli altri" ("Amanda and the Others") , that contains long excerpts from Knox's diary as well as from questionings of witnesses, that were not in the public domain; the book also included intimate details, professing to be about Knox's sex life. Knox's lawyers had asked for $677,000 in damages, but were awarded $55,000 plus $ 6,200 in legal costs.

Media coverage and controversies

Media portrayals

Issues of pretrial publicity

In the early stages of the investigation, well before the trials of the defendants, some of the details of the evidence were made known to the media and were commented-on freely around the world. The UK media, who, at home, are constrained by the Contempt of Court Act 1981, freely published details of the evidence and opinions about events surrounding the murder. According to her lawyers, family and some media, the pretrial publicity tainted the public perception of Knox and may have prejudiced the trial. The lawyers filed complaints with a Milan court and with Italy's privacy watchdog.

Media attacks on the prosecutor

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163. Knox 'ready to fight on', parents say
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179. ^ Owen, Richard (2009-01-13). "Amanda Knox tries to ban 'prurient' book on her love life". The Times. Retrieved 2010-04-09. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

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