Florence court's decision to uphold conviction for murder of Meredith Kercher described as 'mind-boggling' by family
Amanda Knox's parents said there was "no way" that their daughter would return to Italy to serve her sentence for the 2007 murder of the British student Meredith Kercher, adding they were stunned by the verdict that upheld their daughter's conviction.
On Thursday night, after almost 12 hours of deliberations, the Florence appeals court announced it was reinstating the murder convictions handed down in 2009 against the 26-year-old American and her Italian former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito.
He was given a 25-year jail sentence, and ordered to surrender travel documents and not leave the country. She was given 28 and a half years in absentia .
Standing in court, Kercher's sister Stephanie said there was nothing to celebrate about the ruling. But, while agreeing with her, Lyle Kercher, their brother, said the upheld convictions were "the best we could have hoped for".
He added: "This is what we [with the prosecution] have been working towards."
The family's lawyer, Francesca Maresca, said on Thursday night: "I hope this is justice for Meredith and for her family."
But across the Atlantic the reaction was greeted with anger and incomprehension. "If you look at common sense, you look at evidence … then, no, I wasn't expecting this, absolutely not," Knox's father, Curt, told ABC News.
"They got it right in the first appeals trial where they found her innocent and allowed us to bring her home. And this is totally wrong." Her mother, Edda Mellas, said the verdict was "mind-boggling, but not all that surprising".
The Seattle-based student's lawyers said they would be appealing against the verdict and taking it to Italy's highest court in the hope the case would be knocked back down for a another appeal at the second level of the Italian justice system.
"We will obviously fight it because it is not justified and there is no way she's going back over there," Curt Knox said. Mellas said the family was prepared to fight for Knox's freedom – "and it's not going to stop".
The body of Kercher, a 21-year-old Leeds University student from Coulsdon, Surrey, was found in the bedroom of her shared flat in Perugia on the morning of 2 November 2007. She had been in the first weeks of an Erasmus year in the Umbrian hilltop town.
The Florence verdict is the latest development in more than six years of legal battles which have seen the former lovers convicted in 2009, then acquitted on appeal in 2011 and then, last year, refused a definitive acquittal by the court of cassation, which ordered a second appeal, accusing the Perugia appeals court which had annulled the convictions of "numerous deficiencies, contradictions and manifest lack of logic".
It was against this backdrop of sharply differing interpretations that the Florence court began hearing the second appeal in late September. There, prosecutors argued that Knox and Sollecito carried out the murder alongside Rudy Guede, a young man from Ivory Coast who was convicted of the killing and is serving a 16-year sentence following a fast-track trial.
Knox and Sollecito, who insist they were with each other in his flat cooking dinner, smoking cannabis and having sex on the night of the murder, vehemently deny this. They say the case against them is a grave miscarriage of justice.
Legal observers say Italy is unlikely to request Knox's extradition from the US until and unless the convictions are made final by the court of cassation, a process that could take more than a year. Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 days ago.
Amanda Knox's parents said there was "no way" that their daughter would return to Italy to serve her sentence for the 2007 murder of the British student Meredith Kercher, adding they were stunned by the verdict that upheld their daughter's conviction.
On Thursday night, after almost 12 hours of deliberations, the Florence appeals court announced it was reinstating the murder convictions handed down in 2009 against the 26-year-old American and her Italian former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito.
He was given a 25-year jail sentence, and ordered to surrender travel documents and not leave the country. She was given 28 and a half years in absentia .
Standing in court, Kercher's sister Stephanie said there was nothing to celebrate about the ruling. But, while agreeing with her, Lyle Kercher, their brother, said the upheld convictions were "the best we could have hoped for".
He added: "This is what we [with the prosecution] have been working towards."
The family's lawyer, Francesca Maresca, said on Thursday night: "I hope this is justice for Meredith and for her family."
But across the Atlantic the reaction was greeted with anger and incomprehension. "If you look at common sense, you look at evidence … then, no, I wasn't expecting this, absolutely not," Knox's father, Curt, told ABC News.
"They got it right in the first appeals trial where they found her innocent and allowed us to bring her home. And this is totally wrong." Her mother, Edda Mellas, said the verdict was "mind-boggling, but not all that surprising".
The Seattle-based student's lawyers said they would be appealing against the verdict and taking it to Italy's highest court in the hope the case would be knocked back down for a another appeal at the second level of the Italian justice system.
"We will obviously fight it because it is not justified and there is no way she's going back over there," Curt Knox said. Mellas said the family was prepared to fight for Knox's freedom – "and it's not going to stop".
The body of Kercher, a 21-year-old Leeds University student from Coulsdon, Surrey, was found in the bedroom of her shared flat in Perugia on the morning of 2 November 2007. She had been in the first weeks of an Erasmus year in the Umbrian hilltop town.
The Florence verdict is the latest development in more than six years of legal battles which have seen the former lovers convicted in 2009, then acquitted on appeal in 2011 and then, last year, refused a definitive acquittal by the court of cassation, which ordered a second appeal, accusing the Perugia appeals court which had annulled the convictions of "numerous deficiencies, contradictions and manifest lack of logic".
It was against this backdrop of sharply differing interpretations that the Florence court began hearing the second appeal in late September. There, prosecutors argued that Knox and Sollecito carried out the murder alongside Rudy Guede, a young man from Ivory Coast who was convicted of the killing and is serving a 16-year sentence following a fast-track trial.
Knox and Sollecito, who insist they were with each other in his flat cooking dinner, smoking cannabis and having sex on the night of the murder, vehemently deny this. They say the case against them is a grave miscarriage of justice.
Legal observers say Italy is unlikely to request Knox's extradition from the US until and unless the convictions are made final by the court of cassation, a process that could take more than a year. Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 days ago.