South Carolina Criminal Defense Attorneys
Perugia, Italy
An appeals court cleared the young American of murdering her British roommate and allowed her to return home to theU.S.
She left the prison in Italy on Monday night, less than two hours after the verdict was read acquitting her and her former boyfriend of the brutal murder.
Knox thanked Italians who supported her throughout her four years in prison.
Knox’s friend Giulia Alagna told CBS’s “The Early Show,”
“She just couldn’t wait to get on the plane. She told me that, even though she wasn’t yet on the plane, she felt like she was already flying.”
“She was just very, very happy to get on that flight,” added Alagna, who spoke to her friend on the phone as she waited to board her flight Tuesday morning. She said Knox’s voice sounded “strong” in spite of her ordeal.
Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were found guilty two years ago of sexually assaulting and murdering Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old British student who shared an apartment with Knox in Perugia.
In a stunning reversal, thePerugiaappeals court overturned those convictions and set the two free. They had been in prison since Nov. 6, 2007, four days after Kercher’s body had been found at the apartment.
The prosecutor in the case announced this morning that he would appeal the acquittal toItaly’s highest court, but that process will not start until the appeals court issues a complete explanation as to how it arrived at Monday’s decision.
Two hours after the decision, Knox was in a dark limousine that took her out of the Capanne prison just outsidePerugiaand headed toRome.
The prosecution’s case took a major hit when a court-ordered DNA review that discredited crucial genetic evidence used to convict the two in 2009.
While relief swept through the defendants’ benches in the courtroom, members of the Kercher family, who also flew in for the verdict, appeared confused and stunned. Meredith’s older sister Stephanie shed a quiet tear, her mother Arline just looked straight ahead.
“That’s the biggest disappointment, not knowing still,” said Meredith’s sister Stephanie Kercher at the news conference. “Knowing that there is obviously someone, or people, out there who have done this.”
The Kercher family stressed that they respected the court’s decision, and they wouldn’t want anyone innocent spending time behind bars for no reason.
By: Pete Strom, Criminal Defense Attorney
