Amanda Knox found guilty of killing roommate

Amanda Knox is accompanied by a penitentiary police officer prior to a final hearing before the verdict.

PERUGIA, Italy – An Italian court has found Seattle student Amanda Knox guilty of murdering her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, in a bloody 2007 slaying that shocked the country.

She was sentenced to serve 26 years in prison.

Meredith Kercher

The eight members of the jury, including two judges, issued the verdict just after midnight, Italian time, on Saturday morning after sequestering themselves in the courtroom of this Medieval city.

The verdict can be appealed by both parties.

Knox and Sollecito were charged with murder and sexual assault in the November 2007 slaying of Meredith Kercher. The three were all studying in Perugia and Knox and Sollecito were dating at the time.

Both defendants said they are innocent.

The prosecutors sought a life sentence for both, including nine months of daytime solitary confinement for Knox and two months for Sollecito. But under Italian law, in case of a guilty verdict, Knox can receive a lesser sentence than the one requested by the prosecutors.

The Kercher family, from Coulsdon, Surrey, in southern England, arrived in Perugia to be in the courtroom for the verdict.

Both Knox and Sollecito, 25, have been jailed since shortly after the slaying.

Officials said Knox is likely to remain in jail, even though in Italy sentences are not served until all appeals are exhausted, a process that can take years.

Just a day before the deliberations began, Knox made an emotional appeal, trying for the last time to convince the court that she is not a murderer.

But her appeal apparently failed to move the jury, which wasted little time in issuing the guilty verdict.

The prosecutors contend on the night of the murder, Nov. 1, 2007, 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 the three brutally attacked and sexually assaulted the Briton. They were acting, according to the prosecution, under “the fumes of drugs and possibly alcohol.”

Kercher’s body, her throat slit, was found in a pool of blood the next day at the apartment.

Throughout the trial, the prosecutors portrayed Knox as a manipulative, sexually promiscuous woman whose personality clashed with her roommate’s. They say Knox had grown to hate Kercher and wanted to get back at her.

Knox says Kercher was a friend whose death shocked her. Defense lawyers have described the American as a smart and cheerful woman.

DNA traces that the prosecutors have linked to the defendants were disputed in court. The defense lawyers contended that traces were either two small to be attributed with certainty or that evidence may have been inadvertently contaminated in the police investigation.

The prosecution also maintained that a a 6 1/2-inch knife they found at Sollecito’s house could be the murder weapon. The knife has Kercher’s DNA on the blade and Knox’s on the handle, they say. But defense lawyers argue that the knife is too big to match Kercher’s wounds and that the amount of what prosecutors say is Kercher’s DNA is too low to be attributed with certainty.

The defense largely focused on the lack of evidence and what they say is the absence of a clear motive.

Knox has given contradicting versions, saying at one point that she was home the night of the murder and had heard 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 said police pressure led her to initially accuse an innocent man.

Knox and Sollecito were also being tried on lesser charges, including staging a break-in, carrying a knife, and the theft of about $450 in cash and Kercher’s cell phones and credit cards. Prosecutors say Knox and Sollecito broke a window in a bedroom to stage a burglary and sidetrack the investigation.