PERUGIA, Italy, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- American Amanda Knox was acquitted on appeal of murder in Perugia, Italy, Monday, two years after being convicted of killing her British roommate.
The overturning of the most serious charges against her means she will not have to face the remainder of her 26-year prison sentence.
Knox sobbed as the ruling was read and gasps could be heard in the courtroom, People.com reported.
The judge demanded silence from the bench, and officers led the crying Knox out of the courtroom.
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Though her friends, family and lawyers embraced and cheered, a crowd chanted, "Shame! Shame!" outside the courthouse, the report said.
People.com said the two judges and six jurors upheld only one charge of defamation stemming from her statements originally implicating another man in the murder.
Knox's former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 27, also convicted of the 2007 killing and sentenced to 25 years in prison, also will be released, the report said.
Knox, 23, of Seattle, and Sollecito were convicted in December 2009 of sexually assaulting and killing Meredith Kercher. They appealed their sentences, challenging DNA evidence.
"We deserve freedom," Knox told the court.
"Meredith has been murdered, and I always wanted justice for her," she said. "I insist on the truth. … I want to go back home. … I am innocent, Raffaele is innocent."
"The person who shared my life, who had the bed next to mine, had been killed in our home," she said. "And if I had been there that night, I would have been dead, been killed, just like her. The only difference is I was with Raffaele."
She told the judge, "I didn't kill. I didn't rape. I didn't steal. I was not there."
Outside of the courtroom, Giulia Bongiorno, attorney for Sollecito, said, "We believe there were a lot of mistakes made."
"I never hurt anyone, never in my whole life," Sollecito said through a translator. "The charge against me … was so outlandish that I thought it could disappear and within [a few months] everything would be clarified. But this didn't happen. … I've been living a nightmare."
He spoke of a bracelet that read "free Amanda and Raffaele" that he hadn't taken off until now, ABC News reported. He said the bracelet represented a "desire for justice" and "desire for freedom."
Remarks by Sollecito and Knox followed addresses by their attorneys, who criticized their clients' convictions and asked that they be overturned, contending the case was based on faulty evidence, CNN reported.
Kercher, 21, of Coulsdon, England, was found Nov. 2, 2007, with her throat slit, semi-naked and wrapped in a duvet in the Perugia, Italy, house she and Knox shared with two other women.
Rudy Guede, 21, of Ivory Coast, was also convicted of Kercher's murder, in a separate trial, and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. His conviction was upheld on appeal but the sentence reduced to 16 years.
Knox's family members had said they would take her back to Seattle immediately if the verdict is overturned, despite the prosecution's vow to appeal if that occurred.
If the conviction had been upheld, Knox and Sollecito could have appealed for a final time to Italy's highest appeals court, the Supreme Court of Cassation in Rome.
