Perguia (Italy): US student Amanda Knox was acquitted of murder and sexual assault by an Italian court on Tuesday after breaking down in court and pleading for mercy in a dramatic end to her four-year legal battle.
She is expected to be released within hours form her prison in Perugia.
There were cries of “Shame! Shame!” and “Murderer!” from an angry crowd outside the courtroom immediately after the verdict.
The verdict overturns the 24-year-old’s convictions for the grisly killing of her British housemate Meredith Kercher on November 1, 2007 in the university town of Perugia in central Italy where both young women were studying.
Her boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, who was appealing with Knox, was also acquitted of the charges, leaving only one person convicted — local drifter Rudy Guede, who like the other two has always denied murder. Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison and Sollecito to 25 in the original trial. Guede is serving out a 16-year sentence after exhausting his appeals. The 21-year-old Kercher was found half-naked in a pool of blood on the floor of her bedroom in the cottage she shared with Knox. Her body was covered in knife wounds and bruises and investigators found traces of a sexual assault.
In the reconstruction of the crime put forward by prosecutors during the appeal trial, which began in November 2010, Kercher was sexually assaulted by Guede and then held down by Guede and Sollecito while Knox wielded the knife. (AFP)
