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'I have not killed,' tearful Amanda Knox tells jury
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44752948/ns/world_news-europe/#.Tomk2XLNm2Y
A tearful Amanda Knox told an Italian appeals court Monday that she did not kill her British roommate, pleading for the court to free her so she can return to the United States after four years behind bars. The court began deliberations moments later. Knox frequently paused for breath and fought back tears as she spoke in Italian to the eight members of the jury in a packed courtroom, but managed to maintain her composure during the 10-minute address. "I'm not a promiscuous vamp. I'm not violent ... I have not killed, I have not raped. I was not there. I was not present," the 24-year-old American told a packed courtroom in Perugia. "I want to go home, I want to go back to my life, I do not want to be punished and to have my life taken away from me for something I have not done, because I am innocent." The eight-member jury will decide later on Monday if Knox and co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito's 2009 convictions and prison sentences — 26 years for Knox, 25 years for Sollecito — should stand, be dismissed or altered. The case has made Knox an unwilling celebrity and placed Italy's justice system under scrutiny. Presiding Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellmann said the jury would not emerge before 2 p.m. ET at the earliest.
'Paying with my life'
Knox, who has spent the last four years in prison, looked tense as she entered the courthouse where she and Sollecito made their final case for their freedom. "I lost a friend, in the most brutal and inexplicable way possible," Knox told the court in Italian. "My absolute faith in the police authorities was betrayed, I've had to face absolutely unfair ... and baseless accusations. I am paying with my life for things I did not commit." One of the female jurors appeared to be in tears as Knox spoke, NBC's Lester Holt reported from the courtroom. Minutes before, an anxious Sollecito also addressed the court to proclaim his innocence and plead for his release from prison. "Every day I have been in prison I have felt dead," Sollecito told the court. "I never hurt anyone, never in my life. I have been in this nightmare and never, ever woken from it." The weekend in 2007 when Meredith Kercher was murdered was the first the pair planned to spend together "in tenderness and cuddles," he said. At the end of his speech, he took off a bracelet that he said read "Free Amanda and Raffaele," saying that he would like "this bracelet and its history to belong to the past."
'A little bit frightened'
The trial has captivated audiences worldwide: Knox, the angel-faced American, and Sollecito, the bespectacled Italian who was once her boyfriend, were convicted of murdering fellow student Kercher in what the lower court said had begun as a drug-fueled sexual assault. Knox and her family hope she will be set free after spending four life-changing years behind bars as an innocent caught up in what they say is a monumental judicial mistake. Prosecutors, who have depicted Knox as a manipulative liar, are seeking to increase her sentence to life in prison.
"She is confident, she is jittery, she is waiting and a little bit frightened by the wait," Knox's lawyer Maria Del Grosso told reporters earlier. "She is not scared of the truth. She worries for a decision over her life. But she is positive." A decision could take several hours — jurors are not allowed to leave the deliberation room until they agree on a verdict. For the Kercher family, Monday's verdict is a chance at justice for the 21-year-old student, who was living with Knox at the time of her slaying. Her body was found with more than 40 wounds and her throat had been slashed.
The case has spurred countless articles, books and even movies, and brought the Italian judicial system under a harsh spotlight in the U.S., where many believe the Seattle native was wrongly convicted. At the time of the original verdict, there were suggestions of anti-Americanism that even dragged in U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. With huge media interest in the case, the verdict by the jury — which is made up of the presiding judge, a side judge and six jurors, five of them women — will be broadcast live. The jury has several options as they go into deliberations: They can acquit both defendants and set them free. They can uphold the conviction and confirm the sentence, reduce it or increase it. They can theoretically decide to split the fate of Knox and Sollecito, convicting one and acquitting the other.
Brutal crime
Kercher's body was found in her own bedroom in the Perugia apartment she shared with Knox on Nov. 2, 2007. Photos of the crime scene shown to the court in the final days of the appeal showed her chest bared, her face and neck covered in blood — a powerful reminder of the brutal nature of the crime. Four days after her body was found, prosecutors arrested Knox and Sollecito, as well as a Congolese man implicated by Knox during police questioning and later cleared. That false accusation against Diya "Patrick" Lumumba remains one of the most powerful arguments in the prosecution's case against Knox, though the American maintains she acted under police pressure during an interrogation where she had neither a lawyer nor a proper interpreter present.
Defense lawyers accused prosecutors of acting too hastily.
"An uninhibited young American — she was the perfect culprit," Giulia Bongiorno, a defense lawyer for Sollecito, told the court in her final arguments. "When you want to solve a crime in four days, it's haste." Knox and Sollecito were convicted and sentenced after the court deliberated for 13 hours. They have always denied wrongdoing.
Kitchen knife
Over the course of the appeals trial their positions significantly improved, mainly because a court-ordered independent review cast serious doubts over the main DNA evidence linking the two to the crime. Prosecutors maintain that Knox's DNA was found on the handle of a kitchen knife believed to be the murder weapon, and that Kercher's DNA was found on the blade. They said Sollecito's DNA was on the clasp of Kercher's bra as part of a mix of evidence that also included the victim's genetic profile. But the independent review — ordered at the request of the defense, which had always disputed those findings — reached a different conclusion. The two experts found that police conducting the investigation had made glaring errors in evidence-collecting and that below-standard testing and possible contamination raised doubts over the attribution of DNA traces, both on the blade and on the bra clasp, which was collected from the crime scene 46 days after the murder.
The review was crucial in the case because no motive has emerged and witness testimony was contradictory and, in some cases, flat-out unreliable. It was a huge victory for the Knox camp and a potentially fatal blow for the prosecution. Sensing danger, prosecutors spent several hearings and a significant portion of their closing arguments to refute the review, attacking the experts as unqualified, standing by their original conclusions and defending the work of forensic police. They challenged the experts to show exactly how the alleged contamination took place and said there is no scholarly consensus of the minimum amount of DNA required in order for a test to be admissible.
They also pointed to what a prosecutor, Manuela Comodi, called "gigantic, rock-solid circumstantial evidence" that contributed to the original convictions: There was a staged burglary in the apartment, used to sidetrack the investigation. Knox made contradictory statements early on, saying she was home and had to cover her ears to block out Kercher's screams while Lumumba killed her. Lumumba, who owned a pub where Knox occasionally worked, was jailed for two weeks as a result of that claim.
To finish the rest of the article please click on link..(too long to post all of it!)
A tearful Amanda Knox told an Italian appeals court Monday that she did not kill her British roommate, pleading for the court to free her so she can return to the United States after four years behind bars. The court began deliberations moments later. Knox frequently paused for breath and fought back tears as she spoke in Italian to the eight members of the jury in a packed courtroom, but managed to maintain her composure during the 10-minute address. "I'm not a promiscuous vamp. I'm not violent ... I have not killed, I have not raped. I was not there. I was not present," the 24-year-old American told a packed courtroom in Perugia. "I want to go home, I want to go back to my life, I do not want to be punished and to have my life taken away from me for something I have not done, because I am innocent." The eight-member jury will decide later on Monday if Knox and co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito's 2009 convictions and prison sentences — 26 years for Knox, 25 years for Sollecito — should stand, be dismissed or altered. The case has made Knox an unwilling celebrity and placed Italy's justice system under scrutiny. Presiding Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellmann said the jury would not emerge before 2 p.m. ET at the earliest.
'Paying with my life'
Knox, who has spent the last four years in prison, looked tense as she entered the courthouse where she and Sollecito made their final case for their freedom. "I lost a friend, in the most brutal and inexplicable way possible," Knox told the court in Italian. "My absolute faith in the police authorities was betrayed, I've had to face absolutely unfair ... and baseless accusations. I am paying with my life for things I did not commit." One of the female jurors appeared to be in tears as Knox spoke, NBC's Lester Holt reported from the courtroom. Minutes before, an anxious Sollecito also addressed the court to proclaim his innocence and plead for his release from prison. "Every day I have been in prison I have felt dead," Sollecito told the court. "I never hurt anyone, never in my life. I have been in this nightmare and never, ever woken from it." The weekend in 2007 when Meredith Kercher was murdered was the first the pair planned to spend together "in tenderness and cuddles," he said. At the end of his speech, he took off a bracelet that he said read "Free Amanda and Raffaele," saying that he would like "this bracelet and its history to belong to the past."
'A little bit frightened'
The trial has captivated audiences worldwide: Knox, the angel-faced American, and Sollecito, the bespectacled Italian who was once her boyfriend, were convicted of murdering fellow student Kercher in what the lower court said had begun as a drug-fueled sexual assault. Knox and her family hope she will be set free after spending four life-changing years behind bars as an innocent caught up in what they say is a monumental judicial mistake. Prosecutors, who have depicted Knox as a manipulative liar, are seeking to increase her sentence to life in prison.
"She is confident, she is jittery, she is waiting and a little bit frightened by the wait," Knox's lawyer Maria Del Grosso told reporters earlier. "She is not scared of the truth. She worries for a decision over her life. But she is positive." A decision could take several hours — jurors are not allowed to leave the deliberation room until they agree on a verdict. For the Kercher family, Monday's verdict is a chance at justice for the 21-year-old student, who was living with Knox at the time of her slaying. Her body was found with more than 40 wounds and her throat had been slashed.
The case has spurred countless articles, books and even movies, and brought the Italian judicial system under a harsh spotlight in the U.S., where many believe the Seattle native was wrongly convicted. At the time of the original verdict, there were suggestions of anti-Americanism that even dragged in U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. With huge media interest in the case, the verdict by the jury — which is made up of the presiding judge, a side judge and six jurors, five of them women — will be broadcast live. The jury has several options as they go into deliberations: They can acquit both defendants and set them free. They can uphold the conviction and confirm the sentence, reduce it or increase it. They can theoretically decide to split the fate of Knox and Sollecito, convicting one and acquitting the other.
Brutal crime
Kercher's body was found in her own bedroom in the Perugia apartment she shared with Knox on Nov. 2, 2007. Photos of the crime scene shown to the court in the final days of the appeal showed her chest bared, her face and neck covered in blood — a powerful reminder of the brutal nature of the crime. Four days after her body was found, prosecutors arrested Knox and Sollecito, as well as a Congolese man implicated by Knox during police questioning and later cleared. That false accusation against Diya "Patrick" Lumumba remains one of the most powerful arguments in the prosecution's case against Knox, though the American maintains she acted under police pressure during an interrogation where she had neither a lawyer nor a proper interpreter present.
Defense lawyers accused prosecutors of acting too hastily.
"An uninhibited young American — she was the perfect culprit," Giulia Bongiorno, a defense lawyer for Sollecito, told the court in her final arguments. "When you want to solve a crime in four days, it's haste." Knox and Sollecito were convicted and sentenced after the court deliberated for 13 hours. They have always denied wrongdoing.
Kitchen knife
Over the course of the appeals trial their positions significantly improved, mainly because a court-ordered independent review cast serious doubts over the main DNA evidence linking the two to the crime. Prosecutors maintain that Knox's DNA was found on the handle of a kitchen knife believed to be the murder weapon, and that Kercher's DNA was found on the blade. They said Sollecito's DNA was on the clasp of Kercher's bra as part of a mix of evidence that also included the victim's genetic profile. But the independent review — ordered at the request of the defense, which had always disputed those findings — reached a different conclusion. The two experts found that police conducting the investigation had made glaring errors in evidence-collecting and that below-standard testing and possible contamination raised doubts over the attribution of DNA traces, both on the blade and on the bra clasp, which was collected from the crime scene 46 days after the murder.
The review was crucial in the case because no motive has emerged and witness testimony was contradictory and, in some cases, flat-out unreliable. It was a huge victory for the Knox camp and a potentially fatal blow for the prosecution. Sensing danger, prosecutors spent several hearings and a significant portion of their closing arguments to refute the review, attacking the experts as unqualified, standing by their original conclusions and defending the work of forensic police. They challenged the experts to show exactly how the alleged contamination took place and said there is no scholarly consensus of the minimum amount of DNA required in order for a test to be admissible.
They also pointed to what a prosecutor, Manuela Comodi, called "gigantic, rock-solid circumstantial evidence" that contributed to the original convictions: There was a staged burglary in the apartment, used to sidetrack the investigation. Knox made contradictory statements early on, saying she was home and had to cover her ears to block out Kercher's screams while Lumumba killed her. Lumumba, who owned a pub where Knox occasionally worked, was jailed for two weeks as a result of that claim.
To finish the rest of the article please click on link..(too long to post all of it!)
haha.... thank you very much, Adgal and Teko... :)
I don't know where i am here, i guess i would be the alien here, being on the right-center in Spain would mean leaning to the left in the US... Wow, i am speaking like a politician, fitting all choices ;)
I don't know where i am here, i guess i would be the alien here, being on the right-center in Spain would mean leaning to the left in the US... Wow, i am speaking like a politician, fitting all choices ;)
Welcome laurel.....Left leaning here but not a democrat. Yet....
Welcome from me as well! Always great to have a new member join the insanity... I'm the token Canadian who is obsessed with US politics..lol. I'm probably one of the furthest left leaning, but love the righties anyway (even Carl..haha). Amanda
Hi, Carl :)
thanks for the welcome,.... yes, it is my first time here !..
thanks for the welcome,.... yes, it is my first time here !..
Laurel!!!
What's up dude? Haven' seen you in here before.
Decided to jump over here for a break from the SA-Forum, huh?
Good bunch of folks in here (except for the Democrats;-), so welcome to the crew!
Carl
What's up dude? Haven' seen you in here before.
Decided to jump over here for a break from the SA-Forum, huh?
Good bunch of folks in here (except for the Democrats;-), so welcome to the crew!
Carl
Thank you very much for the welcome, MrsPincince :)
I just wonder why she would even falsely accuse someone to begin with...Well either way I guess it doesn't matter because she gets to start her life over and I actually believe the verdict was fair based on the findings that there was no evidence proving she did it. Like you said she definitely seems more mature now. I wish her well.
Oh BTW Laurel, WELCOME to this whacked out group called current events. Buckle your seat belt. You're in for a ride..lol
Oh BTW Laurel, WELCOME to this whacked out group called current events. Buckle your seat belt. You're in for a ride..lol
I don't think it was an issue with the country, any sort of anti American sentiment, or even their legal system. I think she was a victim of a very corrupt prosecutor. I mean, he is up on charges for other bad behaviour. Good and bad everywhere right? I really don't believe she was guilty. The third guy's dna was all over the place and it really looks like he was the one that did it. I think Amanda Knox and her boyfriend were young and stupid, but not guilty. I just don't believe she did it.
What you wonder ? :)
yesss, along with politicians and bankers, they ALL STINK !
I am not sure either of her innocence, maybe it is because i didn't like her but sure, this is not a crime... and she seems a different pèrson now, she has matured for sure, no more cartwheelings and jumps and silly reactions ;).
I am not sure either of her innocence, maybe it is because i didn't like her but sure, this is not a crime... and she seems a different pèrson now, she has matured for sure, no more cartwheelings and jumps and silly reactions ;).
"She was sentenced to three years in prision for falsely accusing an innocent man of being the murderer along with her boyfriend and herself when she confessed the crime"....
Hmmmm....I wonder!
Hmmmm....I wonder!
I can’t say I am 100% convinced that she is completely innocent but I do agree, there was not enough evidence to convict her.
Looks like prosecutors across the globe STINK.
Lately, they really don't seem to be able to make anything stick.
Lately, they really don't seem to be able to make anything stick.
She was sentenced to three years in prision for falsely accusing an innocent man of being the murderer along with her boyfriend and herself when she confessed the crime.... so no chance of suing anyone here.
what was really suspicious was that she kept changing her declarations and even on one occasion she started cartwheeling when she was in front of the police officer, really weird behaviour...i don't think that there was any anti americanism feeling here , an italian was sentenced too.
and she was not backed by the italians... when she was freed by the judge, people shouted vergogna", that's "shame"...
but i agree that i don't think there was enough evidence to say they were guilty of that terrible murder. The police did a terrible work of dealing with the evidences and so the CS investigators, awful work, imo.
what was really suspicious was that she kept changing her declarations and even on one occasion she started cartwheeling when she was in front of the police officer, really weird behaviour...i don't think that there was any anti americanism feeling here , an italian was sentenced too.
and she was not backed by the italians... when she was freed by the judge, people shouted vergogna", that's "shame"...
but i agree that i don't think there was enough evidence to say they were guilty of that terrible murder. The police did a terrible work of dealing with the evidences and so the CS investigators, awful work, imo.
She probably just wants to get the H*ELL outta there..I can't say I blame her. She has time to decide that..One way ticket to The USA PLEASE!!!!!!
I hope they are both smart enuff to leave their past In Italy and move forward, separately. Yeah I did see where they took him out of the courtroom but not much about him yet.
I wonder if she's going to turn around and sue them for "wrongful imprisonment" or something like that, and request 4-years of compensation...
I know right! It does feel right. I mean 8 ITALIAN jurors felt they both were telling the truth...At least they both get to start their lives a new..I'm sure she will NEVER set foot in Italy again. I wonder what is going to happen with her boyfriend. I didn't hear anything about his family yet.
I saw that! I am happy for both of them. It feels right. Even the locals were rooting for them and the prosecuter was jeered by the crowds upon leaving the courthouse. Wow! Can leave immediately after 4 years in a 13by 13 cell.
THEY'RE BOTH NOT GUILTY!!!
Shes the American girl, along with her foreign boyfriend who have been accused of killing her european room mate in Italy.
I watched the news loop 4 times this morning and I don't know what to think either. The evidence does seem circumstantial, there is DNA evidence linking another person to the murder, who by the way is currently incarcerated for the crime..... it's just nuts.
I watched the news loop 4 times this morning and I don't know what to think either. The evidence does seem circumstantial, there is DNA evidence linking another person to the murder, who by the way is currently incarcerated for the crime..... it's just nuts.
Who the hell is Amanda Knox?
I must have been living under a rock while story was circulating, because I have no clue what it's about...
I must have been living under a rock while story was circulating, because I have no clue what it's about...
I dont either, but my gut says with her being American and maybe a little young and free acting, has prejudiced people against her. A new trial might be in order or if the conviction was based on tainted evidence or wrongly done, she needs a new trial or set free. For some reason, I dont think she is guilty of this but not sure why I feel that way. Maybe it is because she looks like such an innocent young girl.
I have NO IDEA if this girl and her boyfriend are guilty or not....I;m am thoroughly confused by this whole case....No motive, all circumstantial evidence, and no actual DNA proof....What do you guys think?
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