NEW YORK, April 19 (UPI) — Amanda Knox writes in her memoir she considered killing herself while imprisoned four years in Italy for a murder she says she did not commit.
From: http://pheed.upi.com/click.phdo?i=bca63d533e9def8dceaa30e1ac5886de
By John Johnson Amanda Knox continues to raise her profile ahead of the April 30 release of her memoir Waiting to Be Heard . As a teaser to her interview with Diane Sawyer to air that night, ABC News reports that Knox reveals in the book that she considered suicide while in prison in…
From: http://www.newser.com/story/166481/amanda-knox-i-considered-suicide.html
Amanda Knox says in a new interview that she’s sometimes “paralyzed” with anxiety stemming from the death of her roommate in Italy and the trial that saw her convicted, then acquitted, in a case that made headlines across the globe.
Knox recently spoke to People magazine over several days at her in mother’s home in Seattle.
Last month, Italy‘s highest criminal court overturned her acquittal in the 2007 slaying of British student Meredith Kercher and ordered a new trial. Italian law cannot compel Knox to return for the new legal proceeding.
Knox tells People she is still dealing with difficult emotions. Her full interview will be published in the magazine’s April 26 edition.
She has a memoir, “Waiting to Be Heard,” due out April 30.
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Online:
http://www.people.com
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/_t17_8DeyUQ/
The Italian presiding appellate judge who acquitted American student Amanda Knox in the murder of her British roommate says he remains certain there is no evidence of her guilt.
Now retired, Judge Pratillo Hellmann was quoted Thursday by Italian newspapers as saying the only evidence that tied Knox and co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito to the crime was refuted by new expert testimony entered on appeal.
Italy‘s highest criminal court this week overturned the acquittals and ordered a new appeals trial for Knox and Sollecito. The two had been found guilty in the 2007 murder of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher, whose throat was slashed. An Ivorian man is serving a 16-year sentence for her slaying.
Hellmann said he would draw the same conclusion again “without a doubt.”
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Amanda Knox 'very confident' she will not return to Italy for murder retrial...
(Second column, 11th story, link)
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WH dodges extradition question...
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When crooked American financier Bernie Madoff was sentenced in New York, the leading Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera published a front-page cartoon mocking Italy‘s trial system.
On one side was a U.S. courtroom, where a judge was handing down a 150-year sentence after a six-month trial. On the other, an Italian courtroom with a judge handing down a six-month sentence after a 150-year trial.
That’s how the country’s No. 1 newspaper summed up Italy‘s slow-moving, and at times inconclusive, justice system.
The decision by Italy‘s highest criminal appeals court to overturn the acquittals of American student Amanda Knox and her former Italian boyfriend, and order a new trial in the 2007 slaying of her British roommate, is once again raising concerns both at home and abroad about how justice works in Italy.
It’s a system where people cleared of serious crimes can have the threat of prison hanging over them for years, while powerful politicians such as former premier Silvio Berlusconi can avoid jail sentences almost indefinitely by filing appeal after appeal until the statute of limitations runs out.
“Lots of confusion and contradictions,” said restaurant chef Angelo Boccanero, giving his impression of the Knox case as he sipped his morning espresso.
And it’s not just the criminal courts that raise eyebrows.
The back log on civil cases is so severe that it hampers desperately sought foreign investment to Italy. Divorces can take years to process, meaning that couples who’ve had enough remain legally tied. And forget about getting quick compensation in a fraudulent property deal — it can take ages (if ever) before you’ll see any money.
Successive governments have pledged to streamline proceedings but have so far failed to do so. That’s largely because powerful people in politics, business and the judiciary have repeatedly fended off reform to protect their interests and the people close to them.
One criticism of the system is Italy‘s high number of lawyers. Milan, for example, has more attorneys than all of France. In civil cases, it takes an average of seven years to reach a verdict.
Defenders say that Italy‘s legal system is one of the world’s most “garantista” — or protective of civil liberties. Defendants are guaranteed three …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
It’s not over yet for Amanda Knox.
Italy‘s top criminal court dealt a stunning setback Tuesday to the 25-year-old college student, overturning her acquittal in the grisly murder of her British roommate and ordering her to stand trial again.
“She thought that the nightmare was over,” Knox’s attorney, Carlo Dalla Vedova, told reporters minutes after conveying the unexpected turn of events to his client, who had stayed up to hear the ruling, which came shortly after 2 a.m. West Coast time. “But she’s ready to fight.”
Now a student at the University of Washington in Seattle, Knox called the decision by the Rome-based Court of Cassation “painful” but said she was confident that she would be exonerated.
The American left Italy a free woman after her October 2011 acquittal — but only after serving nearly four years of a 26-year prison sentence from a lower court that convicted her of murdering Meredith Kercher. The 21-year-old exchange student’s body was found in a pool of blood, her throat slit, in a bedroom of the house the two shared in Perugia, a university town 100 miles north of Rome.
Raffaele Sollecito, Knox’s Italian boyfriend at the time, was also convicted of the Nov. 1, 2007, murder, then later acquitted. His acquittal was also thrown out Tuesday and a new trial ordered.
Italian law cannot compel Knox to return for the new trial and Dalla Vedova said she had no plans to do so.
In any case, the judicial saga is likely to continue for years. It will be months before a date is set for the new trial, to be held in Florence instead of Perugia because the small town has only one appellate court, which already acquitted her.
Prosecution and defense teams must also await details of the ruling explaining why the high court concluded there were procedural errors in the trial that acquitted Knox and Sollecito. The court has 90 days to issue its explanation.
Another Knox defender, Luciano Ghirga, said she was gearing up psychologically for her third trial. Ghirga said he told Knox: “You have always been our strength. We rose up again after the first-level convictions. We’ll have the same resoluteness, the same energy” in the new trial.
British exchange student Meredith Kercher, 21, was found dead, half-naked and in a pool of blood in the apartment she shared with Amanda Knox and two Italian roommates in the Italian university town of Perugia on Nov. 2, 2007. She died of a stab wound to the neck.
A Perugia court convicted Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito of Kercher’s murder on Dec. 4, 2009, and sentenced Knox to 26 years and Sollecito to 25 years. An appellate court overturned their convictions on Oct. 3, 2011, and Knox returned to Seattle a free woman.
On Tuesday, Italy‘s high court ordered a new trial for Knox and Sollecito, overturning their acquittals.
Here’s a look at the various versions of events the night of Nov. 1, 2007 in Perugia.
PROSECUTORS:
Italian prosecutors allege that Knox and Sollecito, then 20 and 23, killed Kercher in a drug-fueled sex assault involving a third man, Rudy Guede of the Ivory Coast. They maintained the murder weapon was a large knife taken from Sollecito’s house and found there by investigators. Prosecutors said the knife matched the wounds on Kercher’s body and had traces of Kercher’s DNA on the blade and Knox’s DNA on the handle. The prosecutors depicted Knox as a sex-obsessed, manipulative “she-devil.”
DEFENSE LAWYERS:
Her defenders portrayed Knox as an innocent girl caught up in an Italian judicial nightmare, brow-beaten into saying things she didn’t mean during a 14-hour interrogation by dozens of police. They claimed inept Italian police contaminated the Kercher crime scene and produced DNA evidence that was not scientifically sound.
APPELLATE COURT RULING:
The appeals court that acquitted Knox and Sollecito in 2011 said there was no murder weapon and determined that the DNA evidence used to convict them was faulty. It also poked holes in the motive described by prosecutors. The court said the lower trial court failed to prove the two were in the house when Kercher was killed and that the guilty verdict wasn’t corroborated by any evidence, but rather based on an improbable scenario: “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.”
The three-judge panel stopped short …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Here is the statement issued by Amanda Knox after Italy‘s highest criminal court overturned her acquittal in the slaying of her British roommate Meredith Kercher. The statement was issued Tuesday by Knox family spokesman David Marriott.
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“It was painful to receive the news that the Italian Supreme Court decided to send my case back for revision when the prosecution’s theory of my involvement in Meredith’s murder has been repeatedly revealed to be completely unfounded and unfair. I believe that any questions as to my innocence must be examined by an objective investigation and a capable prosecution. The prosecution responsible for the many discrepancies in their work must be made to answer for them, for Raffaele’s sake, my sake, and most especially for the sake of Meredith’s family. Our hearts go out to them. No matter what happens, my family and I will face this continuing legal battle as we always have, confident in the truth and with our heads held high in the face of wrongful accusations and unreasonable adversity.”
By The Huffington Post News Editors
Italy’s highest criminal court has overturned the acquittal of Amanda Knox and ordered a new trial, The Associated Press reported.
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More on Amanda Knox
Italy’s highest criminal court has overturned the acquittal of Amanda Knox in the slaying of her British roommate and ordered a new trial.
The Court of Cassation ruled Tuesday that an appeals court in Florence must re-hear the case against the American and her Italian-ex-boyfriend for the murder of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher.
Kercher’s body was found in November 2007 in her bedroom of the house she shared with Knox and other roommates in Perugia, an Italian university town where the two women were exchange students. Her throat had been slashed.
Prosecutors alleged Kercher was the victim of a drug-fueled sex game gone awry. Knox and Raffaele Sollecito denied wrongdoing. An Ivory Coast man, Rudy Guede, was convicted of the slaying in a separate proceeding and is serving a 16-year sentence.
Italy‘s highest criminal court has overturned the acquittal of Amanda Knox in the slaying of her British roommate and ordered a new trial.
The Court of Cassation ruled Tuesday that an appeals court in Florence must re-hear the case against the American and her Italian-ex-boyfriend for the murder of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher.
Kercher’s body was found in November 2007 in her bedroom of the house she shared with Knox and other roommates in Perugia, an Italian university town where the two women were exchange students. Her throat had been slashed.
Prosecutors alleged Kercher was the victim of a drug-fueled sex game gone awry. Knox and Raffaele Sollecito denied wrongdoing. An Ivory Coast man, Rudy Guede, was convicted of the slaying in a separate proceeding and is serving a 16-year sentence.
AP
…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at AOL
U.S. student Amanda Knox and her former Italian boyfriend have to wait another day to learn if they must stand trial yet again in Italy for the 2007 murder of her roommate.
Italy‘s top Court of Cassation put off until Tuesday morning its announcement of its decision on whether to definitively confirm their 2011 acquittals or throw out those verdicts and order what would be the their third trial.
Neither of the two came to court in Rome on Monday to follow the latest stage in their case. Knox was waiting for the decision in her home state of Washington, while her co-defendant and former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, stayed in northern Italy to continue his studies.
The court heard six hours of arguments Monday and spent several hours deliberating that and a handful of other cases before announcing it would issue its decision at 10 a.m. (0900 GMT) Tuesday.
Italian prosecutors have asked the high court to throw out the acquittals for the murder of 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher and order a new trial.
Kercher’s body was found in November 2007 in her bedroom of the house she shared with Knox and other roommates in Perugia, an Italian university town with popular with foreign students. Her throat had been slashed.
Prosecutors have alleged that Kercher was the victim of a drug-fueled sex game gone awry Knox and Sollecito have denied wrongdoing, claiming they weren’t even in the house the night of the murder.
The high court generally gives its rulings the day it hears arguments. But prosecutor general Luigi Riello told reporters that “in very complex cases, it happens” that the court takes another day.
A lawyer for Sollecito, Giulia Bongiorno, said the delay perhaps meant the court wanted “more time to reflect” before its ruling.
Sollecito’s father shrugged off the suspense.
“We have waited so many years, one night is not going to make a difference,” said Francesco Sollecito after some 12 hours in the courthouse, most of that time spent standing quietly in the back of the courtroom during final pleas by both sides. He said he hadn’t yet spoken by phone with his son, who was in the northern city of Verona.
A lawyer says Amanda Knox is “very anxious” as Italy‘s top criminal court hears arguments from prosecutors appealing her acquittal in the murder of her roommate.
Attorney Luciano Ghirga said he spoke to Knox by phone.
The Court of Cassation on Monday is considering prosecutors’ contentions that the 2011 acquittals of American Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend in the murder of British student Meredith Kercher should be thrown out and a new trial ordered.
Prosecutors in Italy can appeal acquittals. In the first trial, Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of the 2007 murder in the university town of Perugia and given long prison sentences. They were acquitted on appeal and Knox returned to the U.S.
Defense attorneys argue the 2011 acquittals were justified. The court could rule later Monday.
A lawyer says Amanda Knox is “very anxious” as Italy‘s top criminal court hears arguments from prosecutors appealing her acquittal in the murder of her roommate.
Attorney Luciano Ghirga said he spoke to Knox by phone.
The Court of Cassation on Monday is considering prosecutors’ contentions that the 2011 acquittals of American Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend in the murder of British student Meredith Kercher should be thrown out and a new trial ordered.
Prosecutors in Italy can appeal acquittals. In the first trial, Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of the 2007 murder in the university town of Perugia and given long prison sentences. They were acquitted on appeal and Knox returned to the U.S.
Defense attorneys argue the 2011 acquittals were justified. The court could rule later Monday.
