Amanda Knox in Seattle, Washington on October 4, 2011. UPI/Jim Bryant |
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ROME, March 25 (UPI) -- Justice "lost its way" in the case of American Amanda Knox and her ex-boyfriend in the 2007 death of Knox's roommate, an Italian prosecutor said Monday.
Prosecutor-General Luigi Riello argued before Italy's highest court that Knox and Raffaele Sollecito should be retried in for the death of British student Meredith Kercher, who prosecutors said died at the hands of Knox, Sollecito and Rudy Guede after a sex game when horribly wrong in November 2007 in the apartment she shared with Knox in Perugia, ANSA reported.
"In this trial, justice has lost its way," Riello told the court Monday.
Knox, now 25, and Sollecito, now 29, were convicted of Kercher's murder in 2009 and served two years in prison before their convictions were overturned in 2011. Neither of them, who were both students along with Kercher, attended the hearing Monday.
Riello said "a fair amount of snobbery" was on display during the original trial, as well as a disorganization of evidence.
He said the appeals court judgment was "a rare concentration of violations of the law and of a lack of logic" that must be "undone."
Guede, now 26, an Ivory Coast native, was convicted separately and sentenced to 16 years in jail.
Knox has been free at home in Seattle since 2011 when an Italian appeals court vacated the murder convictions of Knox and Sollecito .
Luciano Ghirga, a member of Knox's legal team, told ABC News he heard from his client Sunday.
"She is anxious. She is following the process very closely," Ghirga said.
Sollecito also wasn't planning to attend the session, but his father was expected to be in court, ABC News said.
Despite the appeals court ruling, prosecutors and Kercher's family have asked the court to send Knox and Sollecito to prison.
"We feel that Amanda and Raffaele are guilty and were in the room with Rudy Guede," Francesco Maresca, a Kercher family lawyer, said before Monday's session of the Corte di Cassazione, Italy's supreme court, in Rome.
Sollecito's father, Francesco Sollecito, told ANSA his son, who finished his university studies and graduated in jail before his release, has been studying information technology engineering at the University of Verona.
The New York Times last year reported Knox sold the rights for a planned memoir on her conviction and acquittal to HarperCollins for about $4 million. "Waiting to Be Heard" will be released April 30.
Knox is also appealing her conviction for slandering Perugia police because she testified, among other things, that during her all-night interrogation she wasn't allowed to speak to an attorney, was yelled at, wasn't allowed to use a bathroom and a female police officer twice struck her in the back of the head.
