Wednesday 16 October 2019


Amanda Knox Meredith Kercher murder retrial: Q & A

Italy’s highest court has overturned the acquittal of Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, for the murder of Meredith Kercher.

Had the Supreme Court upheld their acquittal, the case would have been closed for good. But it could now drag on for years longer.

It is a heavy blow for Miss Knox and Mr Sollecito, who was meant to be celebrating his 29th birthday today.

Miss Kercher, 21, was murdered in Perugia, where she was studying, in Nov 2007.

Her body was found in a pool of blood in her bedroom in the hillside villa she shared with Miss Knox and two Italian women in the Umbrian hilltop town.

Why did the court order a retrial?

The Supreme Court in Rome, also known as the Court of Cassation, felt that the grounds for their acquittal were shaky. The exact reasons for their decision, and the points of law that they have called into question, will not be known until the judges release their full ruling, which could take several weeks. In launching their challenge to the acquittals last year, prosecutors said the decision to free Miss Knox and her ex-boyfriend was "contradictory and illogical".

What happens next?

There will be a retrial. Instead of being held in Perugia in Umbria, as the original trial and subsequent appeal trial were, it will be heard by an appeals court in Florence in neighbouring Tuscany. It is likely to start in 2014.

So is Knox guilty again?

The Supreme Court ruling annuls the appeal which acquitted Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, leaving their initial conviction for murder standing. But that does not mean they are considered guilty of the murder under Italian law. They can only be considered guilty after all three levels of justice have run their course. So just as they were not considered definitively guilty after the first sentence, nor can they be considered definitively guilty now.

Where are Knox and Sollecito now?

Miss Knox has been living in Seattle and working on a book about her experiences. The eagerly anticipated memoir, called “Waiting to be Heard”, is due to be published on April 30 and will coincide with her first television interview, with the ABC network in the US.

Mr Sollecito, a graduate of computer studies, lives in Verona in northern Italy, where he is studying the use of robotic instruments in surgery.

The third person accused of the crime, Rudy Guede, who was born in Ivory Coast but adopted by an Italian family, is serving a 16-year sentence having undergone a separate trial. Prosecutors insist that he was not the only person involved in the crime.

Will Amanda Knox have to come back to Italy?

It is considered extremely unlikely that she would willingly return to Italy for the retrial. Italian law cannot compel her to return from the United States. The appeals court in Florence could declare her in contempt of court but that carries no additional penalties. It is unclear what would happen if she was convicted in the retrial. "If the court orders another trial, if she is convicted at that trial and if the conviction is upheld by the highest court, then Italy could seek her extradition," Carlo Dalla Vedova, one of her lawyers, said. It would then be up to the US authorities to decide whether to accede to the request.

Why were Knox and Sollecito acquitted in the first place?

The appeals court in Perugia, which quashed their convictions and jail sentences in 2011, criticised many key aspects of the original police investigation and the prosecution’s case. In particular, they said prosecutors had failed to establish a convincing motive for the killing and that DNA evidence relating to two key bits of evidence – a strap from Miss Kercher’s bra and the alleged murder weapon, a kitchen knife – were inconclusive.

However, the court left many questions about the murder unanswered when it refused to rule on whether the crime was committed by a lone killer or more than one person.

In a 144-page document explaining its ruling, the appeals court in Perugia said that “it is not this court’s role to suggest how the crime actually unfolded – nor whether there was one perpetrator or more than one, or on whether other scenarios were overlooked (by investigators).”

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