Guilty! Third Time Not the Charm for Amanda Knox

Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share this on Google+

5

In a decision that stunned defense attorneys and perhaps many more a court in Florence, Italy has found Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito guilty of the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher after the original guilty verdict had been overturned by appeal in 2011.  Restated, they were found Guilty, then Not Guilty, and now Guilty Again.
Presiding Judge Alessando Nencini (below) read the verdict after the court held 12 hours of deliberations, and sentenced Knox to 28 years and 6 months in prison and Sollecito to 25 years in prison and demanded that his passport be revoked.

©AP Photo/Fabrizio Giovannozzi

In a statement Amanda Knox said today “I am frightened and saddened by this unjust verdict… Having been found innocent before, I expected better from the Italian justice system.”
The judge is expected to release a report on the verdict in the next 90 days and then Knox and Sollecito will have 90 days to lodge and appeal, which would see the ruling sent to the Italian Supreme Court.
Knox, who was not required to attend the latest trial, stands a good chance of not having to serve out the sentence regardless of what the Italian Supreme court rules because of the United State’s laws on double jeopardy, whereby a defendant cannot stand trial for a crime for which one has already been acquitted or convicted.
Visit our Amanda Knox Crime Line to see the key events from the tragic murder of Meredith Kercher and the subsequent investigations and trials of Knox and Sollecito.
Photo of Knox/Sollecito ©AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino

FAQ: Amanda Knox

The twisty-turny Amanda Knox saga continues onward, with many questions still lingering after the most recent guilty verdict passed by a court in Florence, Italy.
Below are some Frequently Asked Questions that we’ll try to answer as best as we can.
Is Amanda Knox going to jail in Italy?
Not any time soon. The presiding judge of the court that just delivered the verdict has 90 days to provide their findings that led to the conviction, and then Knox’s lawyers have 90 days to lodge an appeal, which would see the ruling go to the Italian Supreme Court for their judgement. If the Italian Supreme Court were to uphold the conviction (which seems likely, but who knows) then Italy would request that Knox be extradited to face Italian justice. This would initiate a legal tussle that could veer into the realm of politics. Lawyers both here and abroad though claim that Knox likely would be extradited, although some are claiming that double jeopardy could help Amanda Knox avoid fulfilling the sentence.
Did Knox ever confess to murdering Meredith Kercher?
She did not, however during the course of lengthy interrogations, conducted in Italian with some English interpretation,  and without the presence of a lawyer, she implicated her then boss, Patrick Lumumba. According to police interpreter Anna Donnino Knox stated “It’s him, he did it, I can feel it” thus implicating herself by association. Knox later retracted her statement and Lumumba was eventually cleared.
Why is there a widespread perception in Italy that Knox is guilty?
From the beginning of the murder investigation widespread coverage of Knox portrayed an erratic, emotionally awkward American girl who at times behaved inappropriately for someone whose roommate had been viciously murdered. There was mention of her doing “cartwheels” in the police station, kissing her boyfriend around the crime scene, and buying sexy lingerie after the murder.
Can’t DNA clear up her innocence or guilt?
Much of the prosecution’s focus has been on a knife found at Raffaele Sollecito’s apartment which they claim is the murder weapon. In both the appeal to overturn the original conviction and in the latest trial DNA collected from the knife had no trace whatsoever of Meredith Kercher, which makes the latest conviction all the more surprising. It will be really interesting to review the Italian court’s findings from the latest trial to see what evidence and facts they relied upon to reach the guilty verdict.
Has anyone confessed to murdering Kercher?
No, but Rudy Guede, a drifter from the Ivory Coast who had lived in Perugia since he was five admitted that he was at the Knox/Kercher residence the night of the murder but denies he killed her despite his bloody foot and hand prints allegedly being found all over the crime scene. A few days after the murder Guede was tracked down in Germany where he had fled to. And apparently Guede had broken into a nursery in Milan four days before Kercher was murdered and was apprehended by police who found in his possession an 11-inch knife. Despite his claims that he was in the bathroom listening to loud music on his iPod while the murder was being committed a fast-track court found him guilty and sentenced him to 30 years in prison, which was later reduced to 16 on appeal due to his continuing, changing account of the tragic evening of November 1st.

Visit our Amanda Knox Crime Line to learn more about the tragic death of Meredith Kercher and the ongoing Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito saga.

Is This Proof That Amanda Knox Lied About Her Alibi?

An Italian TV show recently broadcast CCTV footage which they claim shows Amanda Knox walking through a car park in Perugia in her old neighborhood the night of Meredith Kercher’s death.
The footage which surfaced on Quarto Grado is timestamped at 20:53, which would prove that Amanda Knox was not at boyfriend Rafaelle Sollecito’s the whole evening, as she claimed.
The investigative reporting show claims that the clothes worn and the walk of the woman is similar to that of Amanda Knox.
According to Barbie Latza Nadeau, author of Angel Face: Sex, Murder and the Inside Story of Amanda Knox, both the prosecution and the defense were aware of the footage but neither side found it useful.

World News Wednesday: Raffaele Sollecito Questions Amanda Knox’s Alibi

As part of his defense strategy to distance himself from Amanda Knox Raffaele Sollecito claimed in a press conference in Rome yesterday that evidence proves that Knox was not with him at his home at the determined time of Meredith Kercher’s death.
SMS evidence indicates that on the fateful night of November 1st, 2007, Amanda Knox sent a text message to Patrice Lumumba, her then boss, to say that she would not be going to work at his bar that night. Knox claimed that she was with Sollecito all night, and had sent the text from Sollecito’s home, but it appears that the text was not sent from his home, and computer records indicate that Sollecito was at his home until at least 9:26pm. Knox’s and Sollecito’s defense claim that Kercher’s murder occurred sometime between 9 and 9:30pm.
In the January 2014 appeal (the appeal of the appeal) that found Knox and Sollecito guilty again judges noted in their lengthy report that Knox had lied about her whereabouts when she sent the text, and Sollecito did initally support her alibi, while claiming to be foggy about the exact details of the early part of the evening because they had been using cannabis. He said “She gave me an alibi. I had nothing to do with it.” Sollecito’s lawyer Giulia Bongiorno added “This text message, according to the court’s own ruling, was not sent from his house. Therefore the pair were not together.”
Despite distancing himself from her Sollecito did say “I always believed, and still believe, that Amanda Marie Knox is innocent.”

Florida Mom Gets Facebook-Shamed By Store Manager For Carrying Tired 5-Year-Old In Baby Carrier

Erica Kalnins never expected that just taking her kids to the Citrus Park Mall would result in an Internet nightmare of the highest order. So the 31-year-old mom of two was shocked when her sister-in-law told her there was photo of her and her kids shopping that had gone viral on Facebook.
A woman named Mindy Domingo, manager of a mall jewelry store named Icing, had posted the photo of Kalnins and her 5-year-old daughter on her public FB profile. In the pic, Kalnins was carrying her daughter in a baby backpack (Domingo had pointed out that she also had her infant in a stroller).
Related: Gang Of Bullies Shame New Mom, Demand She Stop Oversharing About Baby
Domingo posted the image with a rant criticizing Kalnins for putting her five-year-old in a wearable carrier, noting that any parent who would allow such a thing was setting their child up to remain dependent for life.

Erica Kalnins and her kids, via ABC

Kalnins was irate. She’d had no idea that her picture was taken, let alone posted to social media. She told reporters that her daughter hadn’t been feeling well but wanted to check out the store, so she’d put the child in the baby backpack. She said that she did not believe such a thing made her a lazy parent, just a regular mom. Kalnins contacted Domingo to request that the post be taken down; she also requested an apology. Domingo relented and removed the posts, but never apologized.
Kalnins was buoyed by the support she received from child-wearing parents all over the world, however. A group of 24 moms, complete with children in baby backpacks and other forms of child carriers, gathered at the mall where the incident occurred.
The Icing store was quick to act, and posted this on their Facebook page, though it’s unclear whether they’ve fired the store manager in question:

“We were appalled by the views expressed by an Icing Store Manager on her personal Facebook account, and her actions were a significant breach of conduct that we take very seriously. Her personal views in no way reflect the views of Icing, and we have taken the necessary appropriate action with the individual.”

Do you think carrying a 5-year-old child like this is something that deserves to be called out on social media?