Amanda Knox ‘Satisfied’ with Italian Court Ruling
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Kevin Casey/AFP/Getty Images(ROME) — Amanda Knox is “satisfied” with an Italian court’s statement Thursday that demolished the prosecution’s case that led to her conviction for murder and four years in an Italian prison.
The judges’ comments came in a 143-page detailed explanation of their decision in October to dismiss murder charges against Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito.
The ruling freed Knox, now 24, and Sollecito, 27, after spending four years in prison convicted of murdering her English roommate Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy. A third person, Rudy Guede, was convicted in a separate trial and has exhausted his appeals.
The Italian judges appear to criticize the “obsessive duration” of her interrogation by Italian police and shrugged off Knox’s affectionate antics with her co-defendant in the police station — used as evidence of her guilt — as nothing more than “tenderness between lovers.”
In one of its most damning passages, the court statement, called a motivation in the Italian legal system, said that Knox and Sollecito were convicted despite the fact that the prosecutor’s allegation “was not corroborated by any objective element of evidence and in itself was not, in fact probable: the sudden choice of two young people, good and open to other people, to do evil for evil’s sake, just like that, without another reason.”
Knox’s parents Edda Mellas and Curt Knox issued a statement Thursday saying they were “pleased” that the judges’ statement “reiterate and reaffirm what we have known all along, that Amanda had absolutely nothing to do with the tragic and terrible murder of Meredith Kercher.”
“Amanda and we are satisfied with the motivations and take heart in the strength of the judge’s words and proclamation of her innocence,” the statement said.
Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini told ABC News that he has read the court’s reasoning, but does not think it is proper for him to comment. Mignini said that he “believes that the chief prosecutor will appeal the sentence.” The prosecution has 45 days to file an appeal.
The lawyer for the Kercher family was quoted by the Italian news agency ANSA as saying that the motivations “increase the bitterness” of having the murder convictions thrown out.
The judge’s ruling dismantled piece by piece the previous conviction and Knox’s 26 year prison sentence.
“The evidence, even if taken in its totality, does not prove in any way that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are guilty of the murder of Meredith Kercher” and notes that the evidence was largely circumstantial,” the court wrote.
It went on to say that the judges “do not confirm the hypothesis that there were many people necessarily involved in the murder.”
The very “bricks” on which the judges in the first trial built their sentence of Knox and Sollecito “fell away,” the report said.
Not only did these “bricks” get moved, but there was a “lack of materials necessary for their construction,” the judges wrote.
Copyright 2011 ABC News