Amanda Knox is reportedly receiving a $4 million dollar advance for her upcoming tell-all about her years behind bars in an Italian jail.
Amanda Knox Memoir Due in 2013 – After an intense bidding war, Harper Collins has struck a deal with Amanda Knox to tell her story.
Lack of motive, proof led to Knox acquittal: court
Maurizio Troccoli
Reuters US Online Report Top News
Dec 15, 2011 14:23 EST
PERUGIA, Italy (Reuters) – Lack of motive and faulty evidence led to the acquittal of American student Amanda Knox in the murder of her British flatmate, the Italian court that cleared her said on Thursday.
Knox, 24, saw her previous conviction for the murder of Meredith Kercher overturned by the appeals court in October. Hours later, she left the hill town of Perugia and flew home to Seattle.
Kercher, 21, was murdered in 2007 in the apartment she shared with Knox when they were studying in Perugia. The Briton’s half-naked body was found in her own bedroom with over 40 wounds and a deep gash in the throat.
Also acquitted on appeal was Knox’s boyfriend at the time of the murder, the Italian Raffaele Sollecito.
A 144-page document issued by the court to explain its reasoning said forensic evidence used to support the original verdicts was unreliable, and could not ultimately prove the couple were at the crime scene on the night of the murder – November 1, 2007.
Ultimately, the prosecutors’ case could not stand, the court said.
“The bricks of that building just gave way,” the document said. “It’s not just a case of reassembling the bricks … but rather a lack of the necessary material for the construction.”
In Italy, courts have to release a document to explain their motivation for reaching a verdict.
The court pointed to what it said were flaws in collecting forensic evidence and testing DNA traces originally linked to the defendants. The two have always denied being at Knox’s house at the time of the murder.
Knox, who is now considering deals to write a book about her experience, was originally sentenced to 26 years in prison and Sollecito to 25 years in a case that drew attention around the world.
Rudy Guede, an Ivorian drifter who was found guilty and sentenced to 16 years’ jail in a separate trial, is now the only person serving time for the murder, although prosecutors said he could not have killed Kercher by himself.
STABBED IN NECK
The prosecutors said the lack of signs of a struggle on Kercher’s body showed that more than one assailant had pinned her down before stabbing her in the neck.
The appeals judges said it was not up to them to decide whether or not Guede acted alone.
They said no motive had been established and there was no indication that Knox or Sollecito had known Guede before the murder.
“The sudden choice of two young people, good and helpful to others, to commit evil for evil’s sake, without any further reason, seems even more incomprehensible (if it is) to support the criminal act of a young man they had no relation to,” the court said.
It also said there was no proof that the knife discovered in Sollecito’s flat, which police identified as the murder weapon, had ever been present at the crime scene.
The grieving family of Kercher, a Leeds University student, said after the acquittal they felt they were “back to square one” and they needed to know who killed their beloved “Mez,” as Kercher was known, if Knox and Sollecito were innocent.
Prosecutors have said they will appeal against Knox’s acquittal at the Court of Cassation, Italy’s highest appeal court, which can only review possible technical errors in lower court cases.
Independent forensic experts told the appeal trial that police had botched the investigation and had failed to secure the crime scene or follow international forensic protocols. DNA evidence could have been contaminated, they said.
(Writing by Catherine Hornby; Editing by Barry Moody and Alessandra Rizzo)
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Amanda Knox, who was cleared of murder and freed from prison hires attorney for possible book deal
Dan Whitcomb
Reuters US Online Report Domestic News
Dec 05, 2011 17:45 EST
(Reuters) – Amanda Knox, who was cleared of murder and freed from prison by an Italian court in October, has hired a prominent Washington, D.C.-based lawyer as she considers possible book deals, her spokesman said on Monday.
Knox, 24, has retained attorney Robert Barnett “to represent her in discussions with various book publishers who have expressed an interest in Amanda writing a book,” spokesman David Marriott said.
“Mr. Barnett will also assist Amanda and her family in evaluating other opportunities as well,” Marriott said in a statement.
Marriott did not elaborate on those additional opportunities but said few details of a potential book had been yet decided by Knox and her family, including an advance or the possibility of co-authors.
Barnett has previously represented President Barack Obama, former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, singer Barbra Streisand and a host of other political and entertainment luminaries in book deals.
The announcement comes a day after a Seattle-based literary agent announced that she had agreed to represent Knox’s 27-year-old former Italian boyfriend and co-defendant in the sensational murder case, Raffaele Sollecito.
“This is a case I have followed from day one and never, not even for one moment, have I doubted the innocence of Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox,” agent Sharlene Martin said in a statement announcing that deal.
Knox, then a college student studying in Italy, and Sollecito were convicted in 2009 of murdering her 21-year-old British housemate, Meredith Kercher in what prosecutors said was a drug-fueled sexual assault.
An Italian appeals court overturned their convictions in October after independent forensic investigators sharply criticized police scientific evidence in the original investigation, saying it was unreliable.
Knox made a tearful return to her hometown of Seattle last month, saying she was “overwhelmed” by her ordeal and return.
Her father said at the time that the former University of Washington student, whose trial gripped attention on both sides of the Atlantic, had not agreed to any media deals.
Source: Reuters US Online Report Domestic News
via Source One Featured Stories.
Neighbors who live near Amanda Knox’s family in Seattle say they are ready to welcome her back and hope she can avoid a prolonged media blitz and quickly return to her normal life.
Lyle and Stephanie Kercher said questions still remain as to who killed their sister Meredith after Amanda Knox is found not guilty.
US student Amanda Knox was released from prison on Monday after being acquitted of murder and sexual assault in Italy in a dramatic victory for her four-year legal battle to prove her innocence.
Amanda Knox is due to fly home to Seattle after walking free from the Italian prison where she spent four years for Meredith Kercher’s murder
Timeline: Italian court clears Amanda Knox of murder
REUTERS
Reuters US Online Report Domestic News
Oct 03, 2011 16:18 EDT
(Reuters) – Amanda Knox and her Italian former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were cleared and freed Monday after appealing a 2009 verdict that originally found them guilty of murdering British student Meredith Kercher.
Here is a timeline of the main events In the case:
November 2, 2007 – Kercher’s body is found with a stab wound in the throat, in the apartment she shared with American student Knox in the central Italian town of Perugia.
November 6 – Knox, Sollecito, and bar owner Patrick Diya Lumumba are questioned by Italian police.
November 19 – Police say they are seeking a fourth suspect, named as Rudy Hermann Guede, from Ivory Coast. He is arrested the next day in the German city of Mainz. On the same day Lumumba is released without charge from prison in Rome.
April 1, 2008 – Knox, Sollecito and Guede lose their appeals to be released from prison and are told they will stay behind bars until they are charged or released.
October 28, 2008 – Guede is sentenced to 30 years in jail for taking part in Kercher’s murder. His sentence is cut back to 16 years on appeal in 2009.
- Judge Paolo Micheli also orders Knox and Sollecito to stand trial on murder charges.
January 16, 2009 – Trial of Knox and Sollecito begins.
December 5 – A court sentences Knox to 26 years in prison and Sollecito to 25 years after they are found guilty of murdering Kercher during a drunken sex assault.
- Lawyers for Knox and Sollecito say they will appeal the sentences and Knox’s family denounces the verdict as a “failure of the Italian judicial system.”
November 8, 2010 – An Italian court orders Knox to stand trial for slandering police officers during the murder investigation.
November 24, 2010 – Knox and Sollecito’s appeal against their convictions starts and is adjourned. It resumes on December 11.
December 16 – Guede’s conviction is confirmed by Italy‘s highest appeals court.
June 29, 2011 – An independent forensic report discredits police evidence used to help convict Knox.
July 25 – Two court-appointed experts, Carla Vecchiotti and Stefano Conti, tell an appeal hearing the knife thought to have been used to kill Kercher carried no trace of blood but may have been contaminated with other DNA traces.
September 24 – Prosecutors ask the court to keep Knox and Sollecito behind bars for life.
September 26 – Patrick Lumumba’s lawyer Carlo Pacelli calls Knox a “she-devil” and tells the appeals court she destroyed Lumumba’s image by falsely accusing him of the murder, testimony that helps prosecutors attack her credibility. Knox has said she wrongly implicated Lumumba under pressure from police.
September 29 – Wrapping up the defense case, Knox’s lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova points to errors in the probe by police and urges a panel of lay and professional judges to look beyond the image of Knox created by the media and the prosecution.
October 3 – Knox makes a tearful plea to be acquitted of murdering her British roommate, saying she was paying with her life for a crime she did not commit.
– Two professional and six lay judges find Knox and Sollecito not guilty of murder.
– The court upholds a conviction against Knox for slander, after she had falsely accused Lumumba of the murders. It sentenced her to three years in prison, a sentence which has now been served.
(Reporting by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit)
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Witnesses say Amanda Knox has left prison after her 2009 conviction for killing her British roommate was thrown out on appeal. A convoy of cars was seen leaving Perugia’s Campanne prison about 90 minutes after the verdict was handed down
A group of Amanda Knox supporters burst into applause and cheers Monday when they learned an Italian appeals court had thrown out the Seattle native’s murder conviction in the death of her British roommate.
