Amanda Knox sentenced to 26 years

By ALESSANDRA RIZZO and MARTA FALCONI

PERUGIA, Italy – American college student Amanda Knox was found guilty of murdering her British roommate and sentenced to 26 years in prison early Saturday after a year-long trial that gripped Italy and drew intense media attention.

Her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito was also convicted and sentenced to 25 years. They were also found guilty of sexual assault in the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old student from England.

Knox burst into tears and murmured, "No, no," after the judge read the verdict shortly after midnight following some 13 hours of deliberations. She then hugged one of her lawyers.

Minutes later, the 22-year-old Knox, who is from Seattle, and the 25-year-old Sollecito were put in police vans with sirens blaring and driven back to jail.

Prosecutors had sought life imprisonment, Italy's stiffest sentence. Courts can give less severe punishment than what prosecutors demand.

The American's father, Curt Knox, asked if he would fight on for his daughter, replied, with tears in his eyes: "Hell, yes."

"This is just wrong," her stepmother, Cassandra Knox, said, turning around immediately after hearing the verdict. Her family had insisted she was innocent and a victim of character assassination.

One of Knox's attorneys, Luciano Ghirga, was asked if she was distraught. "Yes, I challenge anyone not to be," he replied.

Kercher family lawyer Francesco Maresca called the verdict and sentence "satisfactory," but he acknowledged: "There is deep suffering on all sides."

A group of local youths who gathered outside the courthouse shouted insults and "assassin!" at the Knox family as they walked in to hear the verdict.

Throughout the trial, prosecutors depicted Knox as a promiscuous and manipulative she-devil whose personality clashed with her roommate's. They say Knox had grown to hate Kercher.

The most intimate details of Knox's life were examined, from her lax hygiene — allegedly a point of contention with Kercher — to her sex life, even including a sex toy.

Kercher's body was found in a pool of blood with her throat slit on Nov. 2, 2007, in the bedroom of the house she shared with Knox while the two were studying in the medieval town of Perugia in Italy's central Umbria region. Prosecutors said the Leeds University student was murdered the previous night.

In Seattle, relatives and friends clasped hands as they watched the verdict on TV. "Oh God, no," her uncle, Mick Huff, cried when it was announced.

Other friends buried their faces in their hands and shook their heads.

"They didn't listen to the facts of the case," said Elisabeth Huff, Knox' grandmother. "All they did was listen to the media's lies."

Madison Paxton, Knox's friend from the University of Washington, said: "They're convicting a made-up person ... "They they're convicting 'foxy Knoxy.' That's not Amanda."

Prosecutors argued that on the night of the murder, Knox and Sollecito met at the apartment where Kercher and Knox lived. They say a fourth person was there, Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast citizen who has been convicted in the murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Guede, who is appealing his conviction, says he was in the house the night of the murder but did not kill Kercher.

The prosecution says Knox and Kercher started arguing, and that Knox joined the two men in brutally attacking and sexually assaulting the Briton under "the fumes of drugs and possibly alcohol."

Knox said Kercher was a friend whose slaying shocked and saddened her.

Defense lawyers described the American, who made the dean's list at the University of Washington, as a smart and cheerful woman, at one point even comparing her to film character Amelie, the innocent and dreamy girl in the 2001 French movie of the same title.

That is the film Knox and Sollecito said they were watching at his home on the night of the murder, where they say they smoked marijuana and had sex. Knox said she went home the next morning to find the door to the house open and Kercher dead.

The prosecution said a 6 1/2-inch knife authorities found at Sollecito's house had Kercher's DNA on the blade and Knox's on the handle. Defense lawyers said the knife was too big to match Kercher's wounds and the amount of DNA collected was too small to determine with certainty whose it was.

The defense maintained there was not enough evidence for a conviction and no clear motive.

However, prosecutor Manuela Comodi said violent crimes can lack a motive. "We live at a time where violence is purposeless," she told the jury.

Knox gave contradictory versions of the night of the slaying, saying at one point she was home and had to cover her ears to block out Kercher's screams and accusing a Congolese man of the killing. The man, Patrick Diya Lumumba, owns a pub in Perugia where Knox worked. He was jailed briefly but was later cleared and is seeking defamation damages from Knox.

Knox later contended that police pressure led her to initially accuse an innocent man.

Who is Amanda Knox?

By KRISTI OLOFFSON

After a yearlong trial, a verdict is nearing for Amanda Knox, a 22-year-old American student, who stands accused of killing her British roommate Meredith Kercher while studying abroad in Perugia, Italy, in November 2007. It's a juicy tale that has drawn heavy media coverage in three countries: Knox, prosecutors allege, was a promiscuous party girl who stabbed Kercher to death in a rage after the British 21-year-old refused to take part in a sex game with Knox and her then boyfriend, and was assaulted by a third accomplice, Rudy Hermann Guede. A native of the Ivory Coast, Guede opted for a separate, fast-track trial and was convicted of murder and sexual assault in October 2008 and sentenced to 30 years in prison, but Italian prosecutors say Knox and her boyfriend were accomplices. The prosecution's two main pieces of physical evidence against Knox - small traces of her DNA on a knife and on Kercher's bra clasp - are both disputed: defense lawyers maintain that the clasp wasn't discovered until six weeks after the investigation and that the knife doesn't match Kercher's wounds. An Italian prosecutor has requested a life sentence - Italy's strongest punishment. Knox, meanwhile, maintains her innocence. (Read "Amanda Knox Murder Trial Moves Toward a Climax.")

Fast Facts:
• Born July 9, 1987, in Seattle, the daughter of Edda Mellas, a math teacher, and Curt Knox, a vice president of finance at Macy's; the couple divorced when Knox was a toddler.

• Has two younger sisters, Deanna and Ashley Knox, ages 20 and 14; Deanna withdrew from college for a semester because she couldn't focus in the wake of Knox's trial.

• Began playing soccer at a young age, where her style of defensive play, her parents say, earned her the nickname Foxy Knoxy. The moniker has been used by the media and prosecutors to portray Knox as a seductress.

• Graduated from Seattle Preparatory High School in the spring of 2005, and began attending the University of Washington that fall, working toward a degree in linguistics. Was named in the spring of 2007 to the University of Washington's dean's list.

• Friends say the accusation is shocking; one referred to her as an "amazing person," another said she is "one of the kindest, gentlest human beings we know." But Knox did have another run-in with police when she received a public-disturbance citation for throwing a noisy party in June 2007 - she paid a $269 fine.

• Worked several jobs as a student to save the $10,000 tuition for her study-abroad program in Italy.

• Left Washington to spend her junior year studying abroad as part of a yearlong course with University for Foreigners Perugia in Italy.

• Began dating Raffaele Sollecito, 25, whom she met at a classical-music concert in mid-October 2007 in Italy; Sollecito, an Italian engineering student, is also charged in Kercher's murder.

• On the night of the murder, Knox and Sollecito say they watched a movie, smoked marijuana and had sex at Sollecito's apartment, but were not at the house that Kercher and Knox shared with two other Italian roommates. The defense says Guede, who is appealing his 2008 conviction, was the sole killer of Kercher.

• Her parents say they have already purchased a plane ticket back home to Seattle for their daughter. (See the top 10 crime duos.)

Quotes By:
"They say that I am calm. I am not calm ... I fear to lose myself, to have the mask of the assassin forced upon me."
- While taking the stand for the final time at her trial in Italy (CNN, Dec. 3, 2009)

"Meredith was my friend, I didn't hate her. It's absurd to say that I wanted revenge on a friend who had been very kind to me."
- To the court, after prosecutors called for a life sentence during closing arguments of the trial (Reuters, Nov. 22, 2009)

"It was a complicated situation."
- Explaining at her trial why she originally confessed she was in the cottage the night of the murder when police asked her to imagine what might have happened that night. A higher court later ruled the confession couldn't be used as evidence because she made the statement without an attorney or translator present (TIME, June 12, 2009)

"When they took me before the judge and they said, 'You are a suspect in Meredith's death,' I was completely shocked and surprised. My jaw dropped."
- Speaking in Italian in court, explaining her surprise at being questioned after Kercher's murder (TIME, June 12, 2009)

"When I feel uneasy or nervous, I act a bit foolish."
- Explaining her behavior when questioned by police. Knox was reportedly doing cartwheels and handstands the day after the murder when she was brought into the Italian police station for questioning (People, June 29, 2009) (Read "The Tough Women of the Amanda Knox Case.")

Quotes About:
"She firmly believes that because she's innocent, the evidence will show that and she'll be released. So, it's good that it's getting started. She's also nervous. I mean, they say horrible things about her."
- Edda Mellas, Knox's mother, on the day the trial began (Good Morning America, Jan. 16, 2009)

"The approach of Amanda toward life is exactly the same of AmÉlie - spontaneous, immediate and imprudent."
- Giulia Bongiorno, lawyer for Knox's ex-boyfriend Sollecito, likening Knox to the ingenue in the 2001 French movie AmÉlie - the movie Knox and Sollecito say they were watching the night of the murder (Associated Press, Nov. 30, 2009)

"While I was [at the police station] I found Amanda's behavior very strange. She had no emotion while everyone else was upset. I remember one thing that really upset me. [Meredith's friend] Natalie said, 'I hope she wasn't in too much pain.' Amanda said, 'What do you think? She f___ing bled to death.' At that point no one had told us how Meredith died."
- Robyn Butterworth, a friend of Kercher's, testifying in court (London Evening Standard, Feb. 13, 2009)

"Their behavior at the police station seemed to me really inappropriate ... They sat opposite each other, Amanda put her feet up on Raffaele's legs and made faces at him. Everyone cried except Amanda and Raffaele. I never saw them crying. They were kissing each other."
- Amy Frost, a friend of Kercher's and a student at University for Foreigners Perugia at the time, testifying in court (The Independent of London, Feb. 14, 2009)

"She had harbored hatred for Meredith, and that was the time when it could explode. The time had come to take revenge on that smug girl."
- Giuliano Mignini, lead prosecutor, during closing arguments (Associated Press, Nov. 20, 2009)