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Meredith Kercher
Photograph released by the police and used in early news reports about the murder.
Born	Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher 28 December 1985 Southwark, London, England
Died	1 November 2007(2007-11-01) (aged 21) Perugia, Italy
Cause of death	Knife wounds
Nationality	British
Other names	Nickname "Mez"
Occupation	University exchange student
Known for	Murder victim
Parent(s)	John L. and Arline C. M. Kercher

The murder of Meredith Kercher occurred in Perugia, Italy, on 1 November 2007. The following day, police discovered the body of the 21-year-old British university exchange student in the upstairs flat that she shared with three other young women. She was lying partially unclothed under a duvet in her bedroom; there was blood on the floor, bed and walls. Forensic pathologists concluded she had been choked, after which her throat was stabbed, causing fatal bleeding. Her body had 40 bruises and scratches, plus knife wounds on the neck and hands, and there was evidence of sexual assault.

On 6 November 2007, police arrested three suspects: Amanda Knox, an American student, Raffaele Sollecito, an Italian student and Patrick Lumumba, a bar owner. On 20 November 2007 Rudy Hermann Guede, a resident of Perugia, was also arrested and Patrick Lumumba, completely exonerated, was released.

Guede was convicted on 28 October 2008 of the sexual assault and murder of Kercher. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison. On appeal, his sentence was reduced to 16 years. Guede maintains his innocence and filed a second appeal in May 2010 to the Court of Cassation.

The trial of Knox and Sollecito began on 16 January 2009, and on 4 December 2009 both were found guilty of murder, sexual violence and other charges. Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison, while Sollecito received 25 years. Both have continuously maintained their innocence and have appealed against their convictions. The appeals are expected to be held in the autumn of 2010.

The murder of Meredith Kercher received much media attention in Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States with the initial guilty verdict of Knox and Sollecito being disputed by various observers.

Meredith Kercher

Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher, known to her friends as "Mez", was born on 28 December 1985 in Southwark, London, England, and lived in Coulsdon, South London. She had two older brothers, and an older sister. Her father is a freelance journalist and her mother Arline Kercher is a housewife, born in India.

Kercher attended the Old Palace School in Croydon and then the University of Leeds. As part of the ERASMUS student exchange programme, she went to the University of Perugia to complete her degree course in European Studies. She appeared in a music video for singer Kristian Leontiou's song "Some Say" shortly before her death.

In Perugia, she shared a flat with two Italian women and Amanda Knox, one of the defendants in the case.

Kercher's funeral service was held on 14 December 2007 at Croydon Parish Church, with more than 300 people in attendance. She has since been awarded a posthumous degree by the University of Leeds.

Events surrounding the murder

On 1 November 2007, Kercher's two Italian flatmates were away for the night and Knox was at Sollecito's apartment, at least until about about 8:30pm, when Knox and Sollecito turned off their mobile phones. Kercher spent the early evening with some friends. Just before 9pm, she left with a friend to walk home and they parted company near her friend's flat just before 9:15pm, with Kercher then walking the 500 yards (460 m) towards her own flat alone.

Kercher was murdered in the apartment at around 11pm. An elderly neighbour heard a chilling scream and, soon after, she heard running on the metal staircase which led to Kercher's apartment and then running through the leaves going in the other direction. She concluded that these were the footsteps of at least two people.

The next day, 2 November, at 12:07pm, Knox called Kercher's UK phone, then called a flatmate saying the front door of the flat had been left open and there was some blood. She also called her mother, although it was around 4am in Seattle. At 12:35pm the Italian Post and Communications Police came to investigate the discovery of two mobile phones in a nearby garden, one phone registered to one of the flatmates and the other to Kercher. Knox and Sollecito were standing outside and told them that the premises had been burgled, that a window had been broken and that there were drops of blood in several rooms. At 12:51 and 12:54, Sollecito made two calls to the Carabinieri military police, reporting the possible burglary.

The communications police investigated the upstairs flat: there was blood in several rooms, a bloody footprint in the smaller bathroom, an unflushed toilet in the large bathroom, and blood near Kercher's locked bedroom. The window in one of the bedrooms had been smashed, with broken glass near a large stone in a bag on the floor, and the room had been ransacked. At around 1 pm, the flatmate whose room had been ransacked arrived and said that nothing had been taken.

The door to Kercher's room was forced open and the police found Kercher lying beneath a duvet, soaked in blood, with pools and smears of blood around the room, and the area was secured for investigation.

Police investigation

The Carabinieri police attended the Perugia flat, and the forensic lab in Rome was contacted to process the scene.

Knox and Sollecito were interviewed several times by the police in the days immediately after the murder. On 5 November 2007, Sollecito made a statement, in which he said that he did not know for sure that Knox was with him on the night of the murder, and the police then proceeded to question Knox, who had accompanied him to the police station. Starting at 11pm that evening, she was questioned firstly by the police alone and then, later that night, in the presence of a prosecutor. During these interviews, which were conducted without a lawyer present, Knox made statements implicating Patrick Lumumba, the owner of a bar-restaurant named Le Chic, at which she occasionally worked. She said that she had accompanied Lumumba to Kercher's flat and had been in the kitchen while he committed the murder. The contents of these statements was widely reported in the press at the time.

Knox later claimed that both statements were made under duress and that she had been coerced into implicating Lumumba. She said that she had been struck twice on the back of the head during the questioning, called a "stupid liar" and told that she would be arrested and put in jail for 30 years. Knox repeated these claims during her trial, while a female police officer testified that Knox had only been questioned "firmly but politely". The conduct of these interviews remains an area of controversy in the case, with Knox's lawyer, when summing up at the end of her trial, stating that they lasted a total of 53 hours, a stressful and frightening experience for Knox. Support for Knox's claims have come from another of the police officers present, who has testified that Knox was so pressured during the intense interrogation that she started screaming. The police have continued to deny that Knox was mistreated and, as a result, she has been charged with slander, which has led to a further criminal trial, due to be concluded in October 2010.

Knox was formally arrested later on the morning of 6 November. Some time afterwards she made a written note to the police, in which she partially retracted her earlier statements: she explained that she had been "under the pressures of stress, shock and extreme exhaustion". With regard to Lumumba's role, she said that "I stand by my statements that I made last night about events that could have taken place in my home with Patrik , but I want to make very clear that these events seem more unreal to me that what I said before, that I stayed at Raffaele's house." She went on to say "I see Patrik as the murderer, but the way the truth feels in my mind, there is no way for me to have known because I don't remember FOR SURE if I was at my house that night."

This written note was admissible at the trial of Knox and Sollecito. However, following a ruling by the Court of Cassation, the statements made to police during the night of 5–6 November were not: one because she was being interviewed as a witness and the other because no lawyer was present. Nevertheless, the judge (at the Knox trial) ruled that both statements were admissible in Lumumba's civil case against Knox, which was being tried in the same court at the same time as the criminal trial of Knox and Sollecito.

Lumumba was arrested on 6 November 2007 as a result of Knox's statements. He was detained for two weeks until the arrest of Guede. Initially doubts about his alibi were reported in the press, but ultimately he was completely exonerated.

A few days after the murder, Guede had fled Perugia by train. Interpol traced a computer which he used in Germany to access Facebook in order to reply to a message from a Daily Telegraph journalist. In his message, Guede said that he was aware that he was a suspect and wanted to clear his name. On 20 November 2007, the German transport police arrested Guede on a train near Mainz, Germany, where he was apprehended for travelling without a ticket. When questioned, he claimed that he was on his way back to Italy to give himself up. He was extradited back to Italy on 6 December 2007.

Evidence

The body was found on the floor of Kercher's bedroom, with blood and footprints in various locations in the room. The pathology report found that Kercher's superior thyroid artery had been severed by a stab wound to the neck, and that she died a relatively slow and agonising death, as she inhaled her own blood. Her hyoid bone was broken, indicating that she had been choked before she was stabbed. There were also signs of sexual assault. In all, there were about 40 bruises, defensive wounds, cuts, and stab wounds, but the forensic pathologist could not tell whether one or multiple attackers had been present. The forensic evidence indicated that the death occurred beside the wardrobe, but that the body had been further disrobed and moved near the bed, some time after death, when some blood patterns had set.

A fingerprint in Kercher's blood was matched to a print in Guede's file at the register of foreign residents at Perugia town hall and a bloody print matching his left hand was found on a pillow under the victim's back. His DNA was found in several locations in the bedroom: on and inside Kercher's body; on her shirt and bra; mixed with her blood splatter; and on her handbag. Guede's DNA was also found on toilet paper in one of the bathrooms but no trace of his DNA was found anywhere else in the flat, including the bedroom where the window had been broken and the contents ransacked.

Other forensic evidence included an analysis of the metal clasp of Kercher's bra (retrieved in a second forensic search on 18 December 2007), which revealed small traces of DNA matching Sollecito and three other unidentified people. This has been a controversial part of the case, with Sollecito's defence arguing that the bra strap could have been contaminated when it was moved on the floor, six weeks after the murder, or in the forensic laboratory in Rome. The judge at the trial of Rudy Guede acknowledged that the DNA sample was considered small, but described the claim of contamination at the laboratory as making no sense, since there was no material from which such contamination could have come, and so the risk would have been the loss of traces found there, not the risk of somehow discovering new traces. A further contention is that one of the communications police officers at the crime scene stepped past Sollecito at the doorway, into the room (without shoe-covers) to check for life-signs under the quilt (although during the trial, the officer denied such entry).

Detailed examination of the room with the broken window led investigators to conclude that the apparent break-in had been staged, partly because the window seemed to have been broken after the room had been ransacked.

Chemical analysis revealed slight footprints in the flat, which prosecutors said matched the feet of Knox and Sollecito. Both admitted to having been in the flat the day after the murder, and claimed that this was when they stepped in the blood. Knox's DNA was found mixed with Kercher's blood in the footprints and elsewhere in the apartment.

Knox's DNA was found on a kitchen knife, recovered from Sollecito's flat, and Kercher's DNA was found on the blade. This "double DNA" knife continues to be a major source of controversy. Firstly, it could only match one of the three wounds on Kercher's neck. Secondly, although it matched Kercher's DNA, it tested negative for blood. Thirdly, it was explicable that Knox's DNA would normally be on the knife because she used knives for cooking at Sollecito's apartment. Fourth, the testing of Kercher's DNA was a further area of controversy. The form of DNA test used to identify Kercher's DNA was a low copy number (LCN) DNA test, which some experts regard as unreliable. LCN testing is more sensitive than standard DNA testing and is able to test, for example, the amount of DNA that a person would leave on a cup after drinking from it. In this case it was used because the police believed that the knife had been cleaned with bleach, leaving only microscopic traces of DNA. LCN is used in a number of countries, including Britain, Italy and one state in America, but requires specialist laboratory conditions to be conducted reliably, partly because of the risk of contamination of samples. Controversy continues with regard to the possibility that such contamination could have occurred in this case.

There was no forensic evidence, such as DNA, hair, fibre, blood or skin, directly indicating that Knox had been in the bedroom where Meredith Kercher was sexually assaulted and murdered. The only fingerprints of Knox which were found anywhere in the apartment were those on a glass in the kitchen sink. Knox's fingerprints were not found in Kercher's bedroom, nor her own bedroom.

Defendants

Rudy Guédé

Rudy Hermann Guédé (in English, usually 'Guede') was aged 20 at the time of the murder. Originally from Côte d'Ivoire, he had come to Perugia at the age of five with his father, who worked as a labourer in the 1990s. At the age of 16, when his father left Italy, Guede was informally adopted by the family of a wealthy local businessman, Paolo Caporali. Guede had acquired joint Italian nationality, and sporadically studied accounting and hotelkeeping. He also played basketball for the Perugia youth team in the 2004–2005 season. He often stayed with his aunt who lived in Lecco, near Milan, and sometimes worked in Milan bars, returning occasionally to Perugia.

During the week of the murder, Guede was staying in a house a few streets from Sollecito's flat on Via del Canerino, which had been purchased for him by his adoptive parents.

According to Times Online, Guede was known as a small-time drug dealer, a drifter with a prior record of petty crime and drug offences who, according to some witnesses, harassed women and stole from their handbags.

Guede was connected to at least three break-ins: in the house of a Perugia bartender, in a nursery school in Milan, and in a Perugia law office.

Amanda Knox

Amanda Marie Knox was, at the time of Kercher's murder, a 20-year-old University of Washington language student from Seattle, Washington. She was in Perugia attending the University for Foreigners for one year, studying Italian, German and creative writing. In Perugia she lived in the same shared flat as Kercher. Knox had met Raffaele Sollecito at a classical music concert and had become his girlfriend.

Raffaele Sollecito

Raffaele Sollecito, from Giovinazzo, Bari, was 23 years old at the time of the murder, and nearing the completion of a degree in computer engineering at the University of Perugia, which he finished while awaiting trial in prison. He is from an affluent family, the son of a urologist from Bari.

Rudy Guede trial and appeal

Fast track trial

Guede elected for a "fast-track" trial which began on 16 October 2008, presided over by Judge Paolo Micheli. Under the fast-track option, a defendant gives up the right to test the evidence in a full trial, in exchange for a more lenient sentence, if found guilty. The trial was held in closed session, with no reporters present. He was charged with murder, sexual assault and theft of 300 euros, two credit cards and two mobile phones.

Guede's account was that he had met Kercher the night before the murder at a Halloween party and that they had scheduled a date for the next evening at her home. He said that, on the night of the murder, he had gone to Kercher's home and waited outside until she arrived and let him in. She had then discovered that money had been taken from her room, but he calmed her and she did not phone her flatmates or parents about the missing money. He said that he became intimate with her but, feeling sick from a bad kebab, he left her room to use the toilet.

He said that he was listening to music on his iPod, might have heard the doorbell ring and did hear Kercher scream. He maintained that he emerged from the bathroom to see a man whom he did not know holding a knife over the victim while she lay on the floor of her bedroom.

According to Guede's account, he struggled with the man and his hand was cut by a knife. The existence of a cut was confirmed by the police who detained him in Germany, but its cause was not provable. He said the man then fled, saying: "He is black. If a black man is found, then a black man will be found guilty. Let's go". Guede then used bath towels to stem the flow of blood from Kercher's neck and to wipe up blood. He said that he left Kercher fully clothed, with the duvet and pillow on the bed and that, in haste and panic, he touched almost everything in the victim's room.

Without calling the police or an ambulance for Kercher (he explained that there was no mobile phone nearby and that he was confused), Guede fled, leaving the front door unlocked. He went home to wash the victim's blood off his body and clothing. Later, he went out to various nightclubs.

Guede's claims about having planned a date with Kercher were dismissed by Judge Micheli, because Guede had changed the details of where he claimed to have met Kercher, and because friends who had accompanied Kercher for Halloween testified that no meeting between them had taken place. Details about Kercher's Halloween activities had been announced on worldwide news and Internet websites prior to Guede's arrest. Micheli also noted that because Guede insisted the duvet and single pillow remained on the bed (and he didn't move them to the floor), Guede could not explain his Nike blood shoe print on the pillow under the body, with his bloody hand print.

On 28 October 2008, Guede was found guilty of the murder and sexual assault of Kercher and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Appeal

At Guede's trial he had not implicated Knox or Sollecito in the crime but, at his appeal, he claimed that, while in the bathroom, he had heard Knox's voice arguing with Kercher about some missing money in the bedroom. He now also claimed that the knife-wielding man he had encountered in the bedroom resembled Sollecito. He further said that when he glanced out of the window, he saw the silhouette of Knox leaving the house. The appeal judges theorized that Guede chose to keep quiet as long as he could about Knox and Sollecito's involvement because, had he accused them, he would have exposed himself to retaliatory statements.

On 22 December 2009, the Corte d'Appello upheld Guede's convictions but reduced his sentence to 16 years. In March 2010, the Corte d'Appello issued a detailed report of its ruling. The judges explained that they reduced Guede's sentence by 14 years because he was the only one of the three defendants to apologise to the Kercher family for his actions. The reduced sentence of 16 years also takes account of Guede's option for a fast-track trial, which grants an automatic reduction of any sentence by one third.

Guede continues to assert that he is innocent and will pursue a second and final appeal to the Court of Cassation.

Subsequent events

In February 2010, one of Guede's fellow prisoners, Mario Alessi, who is currently serving life imprisonment for the killing of a small child, made a sworn statement to Sollecito's defence team that Guede had told him that Knox and Sollecito were not involved, and that a second person had been present at the scene of the murder. However, Guede has denied Alessi's claims, stating that he has never talked to anyone about his trial, and announced his intention to sue Alessi for defamation.

Knox and Sollecito trial and appeals

Committal hearings

The indictment of Knox and Sollecito was decided and issued at the same time as Guede's trial in October 2008 and was also held in a closed court session before Judge Micheli.

From a detailed analysis of the very large number and positions of bloodstains in the flat, and the cuts and bruises sustained by Kercher, Micheli concluded that Kercher had been sexually assaulted and then murdered by multiple attackers. He also concluded that the apparent break-in had been faked and that one or more people returned to the crime scene, rearranged the body and staged the fake a break-in, some time after the murder. He concluded the only people with a motive for faking a break-in would be those who had keys to the flat. Judge Micheli also believed that it was suspicious that Sollecito called the Carabinieri military police, saying that a burglary had occurred but "nothing had been taken" when other flatmates had not yet returned to check their rooms for missing items. He also found suspicious Knox's claim to have taken a shower in a room with blood on the floor.

Following the court session, Sollecito’s lawyer Luca Maori described the prosecution's theory on the motive for the murder as being part of a "satanic rite" and this was widely reported in the press, some of whom linked this with the fact that the murder occurred on the day after Halloween. However, Judge Micheli dismissed this motive as fantasy and made it clear that the committal for trial of the two suspects was not based on this theory.

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito trial

The trial of Knox and Sollecito began on 16 January 2009, before the Corte d'Assise of Perugia, with much attention from the media. They were charged with murder, sexual assault, simulating a crime (burglary), carrying a knife, and theft of 300 euros, two credit cards and two mobile phones. The presiding judge was Giancarlo Massei, with deputy judge Beatrice Cristiani. Six lay judges joined them to complete the panel convened to hear the case and determine the verdicts.

Knox was represented by attorneys Luciano Ghirga and Carlo Dalla Vedova, Sollecito was defended by Giulia Bongiorno and the head prosecutor in the trial was Guiliano Mignini, assisted by Manuela Comodi. Since the trial, Mignini has been convicted by a Florence court for "abuse of office", in an unrelated case, but has protested his innocence, and remains in office, pending an appeal.

Hearings were held nearly every two weeks (except for a summer break) until 4 December 2009. Rudy Guede attended the trial, but declined to testify. During the first session, Judge Massei rejected a request by the Kercher family to hold the trial behind closed doors. He ruled that the trial would be public, but with closed sessions to be decided on a case-by-case basis.

The case was opened for the prosecution with witnesses from the Postal police, and Kercher's flatmates and their friends, to establish the events leading up to the murder and on the day the body was found. The prosecution sought to prove that the break-in at the murder scene had been staged. Evidence was presented that shards of glass from the broken window were found on top of a computer and clothes that had been strewn around the room, suggesting that the window had been broken after the room had been ransacked. A flat-mate testified she had left her room tidy, and nothing major had been stolen.

The prosecution presented a range of forensic evidence which included analysis of the bloody footprints found at the crime scene. In particular, a footprint, believed to be a woman's, was found under the body. It was the right size to be Knox's, although it had not been matched to any of her actual footwear. Another bloody footprint at the apartment was claimed to match Sollecito's foot. Forensic evidence was produced regarding Kercher's bra strap, with Sollecito's DNA on the clasp, and the kitchen knife retrieved from Sollecito's apartment which had Knox's DNA on the handle and a minute trace of Kercher's DNA on the blade. The prosecution claimed that this was the murder weapon.

Police evidence was presented to show that Knox and Sollecito did not have provable alibis for the time of the murder. Sollecito maintained that he was at his apartment, using his computer, but police computer analysts told the trial that Sollecito's computer had not been used between 9:10 on the evening of the murder, and 5:32 the next morning. Knox has maintained that she was with Sollecito at the time, but in his statement to police, he said that he could not remember if she was with him or not. Their version of events was further contradicted by a homeless man, who testified that he had seen Knox and Sollecito chatting animatedly on a basketball court, within sight of Kercher's house, around five times, between 9.30 and midnight on the night of the murder. A Perugia shopkeeper gave evidence that Knox had gone to her supermarket at 7:45 on the morning after the murder, at a time when Knox was, according to her own account, still at Sollecito's.

In June 2009, the defence lawyers began to present their case, and Knox testified for the first time on 12 June 2009, pleading her innocence. She told the court that she had been with Sollecito in his apartment on the night of the murder. The defence pointed out that, despite having put forward several different theories, the prosecution had produced no convincing evidence of a motive for murder. Knox testified that she regarded Kercher as her friend and had no reason to kill her.

The defence sought to show that Guede could have been a lone killer. Two Perugia lawyers and a school director testified that he had been caught with a large (16-inch, 40-cm) stolen knife inside a closed Milan school on 27 October 2007, and was also in possession of a laptop PC and a mobile phone previously stolen by somebody from a Perugia solicitors' office, burgled with a rock breaking an upstairs window. Guede said that he had bought both the stolen laptop and phone at a railway station in Milan. The school director testified that a small amount of money was also missing when she found Guede looking inside a cabinet in the school office, following his alleged break-in. An expert witness for the defence testified that the window of Kercher's flat had been broken from the outside, and presented a video of stones shattering similar windows.

The defence challenged the prosecution's DNA evidence, suggesting that the quantity of DNA matched to Kercher on the "double DNA" knife was too small to be reliably tested and that, in any case, that knife only matched one of the three wounds in Kercher's neck. The bra clasp had been logged, but not collected, in the initial police crime scene investigation, and the defence argued that it could have been contaminated with Sollecito's DNA some time before it was finally tested. Furthermore, the defence pointed out that there was not a single piece of Knox's DNA found in Kercher's bedroom, where the crime had been committed.

Towards the end of November, the prosecution and defence began summing up their cases. On 4 December 2009, after 13 hours of deliberations by the panel of judges, Knox was convicted of all counts except theft and was sentenced to 26 years in prison. Sollecito was found guilty of all five charges attributed to him and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Judges' report

On 4 March 2010, the Corte d'Assise of Perugia released a 427-page report, detailing its rationale in reaching its verdicts. In its report, the Court determined that Rudy Guede, not Knox or Sollecito, was the main instigator of the violent attack against Meredith Kercher and that Knox and Sollecito had acted without malice or premeditation in their involvement with the killing. The Court found that the murder was without planning, without any animosity or grudge against the victim, but that Knox and Sollecito, influenced by drugs, had actively participated in helping Guede to sexually assault Kercher.

The panel of judges apparently rejected some of the more lurid prosecution claims, especially those based on Knox's behaviour, such as her cart-wheeling in the police station in the days after the murder: instead, the judges' decision was based on the forensic evidence presented. In particular, the Court concluded that one bloody footprint found on the bathroom mat belonged to Sollecito, while a shoeprint in a bedroom was made by Knox. The judges concluded that Knox and Sollecito had stabbed Kercher in the neck using two different knives, but after the murder they had covered the body with a duvet in a sort of repentance for what had been done.

The Court further believed that Knox and Sollecito had staged the apparent break-in at the house to make it appear that Kercher had been killed by an intruder. They went on to say they believed that Knox had attempted to shift the blame by falsely accusing Patrick Lumumba, in order to put the investigators onto the wrong track despite her having no motive which could justify such a serious accusation.

Filing of appeals

In April 2010, appeals were filed by the prosecution and the defence teams of both Knox and Sollecito. The prosecution assert that the current sentences are too lenient and are seeking to increase them to life sentences. The defence repudiate all points of the original trial, including Knox's questioning by police and the DNA and other forensic evidence. They also intend to produce a new witness, who the defence believe can prove that Knox and Sollecito were not involved in the killing.

On 9 June 2010, the Daily Mail reported that Luciano Aviello, a 41-year-old supergrass serving a prison sentence for involvement with Mafia crimes, had come forward to claim that his brother confessed to the murder of Meredith Kercher. The whereabouts of the brother, Antonio Aviello, are unknown. Authorities were aware of Aviello's claims during the trial but decided not to investigate them as they deemed his supporting evidence to be unreliable.

The appeals will proceed as a trial de novo (new trial) which is expected to take place in the autumn of 2010 before the Appellate Court of Assizes, presided over by Judge Emanuele Medoro.

Media coverage

Media portrayals of the fairness of Knox and Sollecito's trial included a range of views. A number of commentators in the United States have harshly criticized the tribunal.

On October 16, 2009 on CNN Larry King Live John Q. Kelly stated “This case is probably the most egregious international railroading of two innocent young people that I have ever seen. This is actually a public lynching based on rank speculation and vindictiveness. It's just a nightmare what these parents are going through and what these young adults are going through."

On April 4, 2009 on CBS 48 Hours private investigator Paul Ciolino stated “This is a lynching. This is a lynching that’s happening right now in modern day Europe to an American girl who has no business being charged with anything.” On the same segment Author Doug Preston stated “This is a case based on lies superstition and crazy conspiracy theories and that’s it."

On December 6, 2009 on CNN Larry King Live Vanity Fair Contributing Editor Judy Bachrach stated: “I have always thought that Amanda was going to go to a kangaroo court and unfortunately I’ve been proven correct.”

On December 10, 2009 CBS Correspondent Peter Van Sant stated “She’s an innocent woman. And I would stake my reputation as a journalist and I have been in this business for a quarter century.”

On June 10, 2009 Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Tim Egan stated in the New York Times “The case against Knox has so many holes in it and is so tied to the career of a powerful prosecutor who is under indictment for professional misconduct that any fair minded jury would have thrown it out months ago.”

On March 2, 2010 Donald Trump stated in an interview with Seattle based Komo news “This is a miscarriage of justice. I think the president should absolutely get involved and I think people should boycott Italy. They should not go to Italy. This is not a close call that she may be guilty. She's not guilty!"

Alex Wade, writing in The Times, was critical, saying "If by some cruel miracle a British judge had found himself presiding over 12 good men and true, whose task it was to determine whether Knox was innocent of Kercher’s murder, it is inconceivable that he would not have made strong, telling directions to acquit".

Libby Purves, writing in the same newspaper, said "both evidence and reconstruction look pretty convincing" and described the American campaign for Amanda Knox as "almost libellously critical of the Italian court". The U.S. media have increasingly focused on the Knox family's campaign to free their daughter, including criticism of the Italian court.

The Kercher family have made clear their views that the trial was fair, but have otherwise avoided much media attention.

Reported views of Knox's lawyers include a piece in the New York Times, during Knox and Sollecito's trial, which reported, "Ms. Knox is often portrayed as an innocent girl unwittingly caught up in the Kafkaesque Italian justice system. But even one of her lawyers, Carlo Dalla Vedova, said that he believed the trial was fair. He added that he 'disagreed' with news media coverage that depicted it otherwise." On the other hand, at the filing of appeals, Knox's lawyers have been quoted as saying that the original case was "botched" by the prosecution.

According to Knox's lawyers, family and some media, the pretrial publicity tainted the public perception of Knox and may have prejudiced the trial. The lawyers filed complaints with a Milan court and with Italy's privacy watchdog.

Support for Knox

Of the three convictions, only Knox's has provoked a significant lobby of protest, mainly in the United States. Her family and various supporters maintain that she has been unjustly convicted.

Knox's family's PR campaign

Knox's family engaged the services of David Marriott, of Gogerty Stark Marriott, a Seattle-based public relations firm, to handle the public relations aspects of their campaign. Marriott is a former television news reporter and has been the press secretary for a former Seattle mayor, as well as having run several communications consulting firms.

Marriott ensured that journalists in Perugia in the early stages of the case could only get access to the Knox family if they gave guarantees about positive coverage. As time went on the family opted to speak primarily to the American TV networks. Since then, they have appeared on several TV talk shows, such as the Oprah Winfrey Show on 23 February 2010.

Senator Maria Cantwell's accusations of anti-Americanism

On 4 December 2009, the day the verdict on Knox and Sollecito was announced in the criminal trial, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell of the State of Washington released a statement expressing her concerns:

I am saddened by the verdict and I have serious questions about the Italian justice system and whether anti-Americanism tainted this trial. The prosecution did not present enough evidence for an impartial jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms. Knox was guilty. Italian jurors were not sequestered and were allowed to view highly negative news coverage about Ms. Knox. Other flaws in the Italian justice system on display in this case included the harsh treatment of Ms. Knox following her arrest; negligent handling of evidence by investigators; and pending charges of misconduct against one of the prosecutors stemming from another murder trial."

Senator Cantwell indicated her intention to seek assistance from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Secretary Clinton herself has not commented on the case, but a spokesman for the US Department of State stated at a press conference on 7 December 2009 that the State Department has followed this case very closely and will continue to follow it during the appeal process. He stated that the State Department's role is to ensure that any American citizen is treated fairly, according to local law. He added that, in this case, "It is still in the early days but...we haven't received any indications necessarily that Italian law was not followed". He also stated "This is an ongoing process" and "It does not mean that we are not going to have some kind of statement as the process goes forward." The State Department stated its intention to hold ongoing discussions about the case with Senator Cantwell and to continue staying in contact with the Knox family to monitor the situation during the appeal process.

Friends of Amanda

Friends of Amanda is an organisation describing itself as: "a group of people who recognize that Amanda is innocent. We are not affiliated with her family, and no one is paying us. We simply want to see justice." Their membership, constitution and source of funding is not stated, but their spokesperson is Anne Bremner. Its supporters include Paul Ciolino, a Chicago investigator, and Douglas Preston, who wrote The Monster of Florence, a book about an Italian serial killer case.

Their website provides their views of the facts of the case, together with a media kit, providing briefings on their side of the story for journalists, and provides addresses and links to help supporters to lobby U.S. senators and the U.S. President. The group has also organised fundraising events to contribute to the Knox family's legal and travel bills.

Other court cases arising from the events of the murder

Civil lawsuit filed by Kercher's family

Kercher's family filed a civil suit against anyone found guilty of the murder. The courted awarded a sum of €1,000,000 to each of the parents and €800,000 to each of Kercher's siblings.

Patrick Lumumba's civil lawsuit against Knox

Patrick Lumumba, the man originally accused of murdering Kercher, sued Knox for defamation and was awarded €40,000. He also pursued compensation from the Italian authorities for unjust imprisonment and the loss of his business and, in December 2009, a court awarded €8,000 in damages. In February 2010, Lumumba announced that he would be taking his claim for compensation from the Italian authorities to the European Court of Human Rights.

Civil lawsuit filed by Amanda Knox

In March 2010, Knox won a lawsuit against Fiorenza Sarzanini, director of Corriere della Sera, Paolo Mieli, and RCS Quotidiani S.p.A. and RCS Libri S.p.A. magazines, for violation of her privacy and illegal publication of Court documents. Sarzanini had written and Mieli published the book "Amanda e gli altri" ("Amanda and the Others") , that contains long excerpts from Knox's diary as well as from witness interviews that were not in the public domain. The book also included intimate details, professing to be about Knox's sex life. Knox was awarded €40,000 in damages.

Criminal slander case against Amanda Knox

Following an investigation into Knox's statements that she had been mistreated by police during her questioning about the murder, a case for criminal slander was opened against her on 1 June 2010 and has been adjourned until October 2010.

Portrayals in books and documentaries

Books

• Candace Dempsey: Murder in Italy: The Shocking Slaying of a British Student, the Accused American Girl, and an International Scandal, Berkley, ISBN 978-0425230831
• Paul Russell, Graham Johnson, Luciano Garofano: Darkness Descending - the Murder of Meredith Kercher, Pocket Books, 7 Jan 2010, ISBN 1847398626, 978-1847398628 (Paperback)
• John Follain: Death in Perugia: The definitive account of the killing of British student Meredith Kercher, Hodder & Stoughton General, ISBN 034099309X, 978-0340993095
• Barbie Latza Nadeau: Angel Face: The True Story of Student Killer Amanda Knox: The Real Story of Student Killer Amanda Knox, Beast Books, 15 May 2010, ISBN 0984295135, 978-0984295135
• Gary C King: The Murder of Meredith Kercher, John Blake Publishing Ltd, 4 Jan 2010, ISBN 184454902X, 978-1844549023

TV documentaries

• Sex, Lies and the Murder of Meredith Kercher, "Cutting Edge" documentary for Channel 4. Broadcast in the UK on 17 April 2008, 9pm, Channel4.

References

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139. "Amanda Knox Victim Fights for Cash". Daily Express. London. 7 February 2010.
140. ABC News http://abcnews.go.com/2020/AmandaKnox/small-victory-amanda-knox/story?id=10169888&page=1. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
141. ABC News http://abcnews.go.com/2020/AmandaKnox/small-victory-amanda-knox/story?id=10169888&page=2. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
142. "Cutting Edge: Meredith Kercher". Channel4.com. 2008-04-17. Retrieved 2010-06-16.

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