Prosecutors to demand Knox, Sollecito declared guilty

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Prosecutors to demand Knox, Sollecito declared guilty

By Denis Greenan (ANSA.IT) 16:44, November 27, 2013

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Florence, November 26 - Prosecutors in a repeat appeals trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are set to call for them to be found guilty of the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, saying Italy's highest court demolished their 2011 acquittal when it sent the case back to the appeal stage. "The reasoning behind the decision to acquit was razed to the ground" by the Cassation Court in its March 25 ruling, prosecutor Alessandro Crini told the court in his final arguments Monday, on the eve of his sentencing request Tuesday. The supreme court ruled that forensic evidence had been wrongly dismissed in the acquittal and a prosecution theory about a sex game that went wrong should be re-examined. The former American student and her Italian ex-boyfriend are being retried on murder charges for the November 1, 2007, sexual assault and stabbing of Kercher, who was found dead on the floor of an apartment she shared with Knox in Perugia.

Leeds University exchange student Kercher was 21.

Knox and Sollecito were convicted in 2009 to 26 and 25 years and acquitted on appeal in 2011, having each spent four years in prison. A third suspect, Ivorian national Rudy Guede, was convicted in a fast-track trial and is serving a 16-year sentence for the sexual assault and murder of Kercher, but the Cassation Court found it unlikely he acted alone.

The retrial opened in Florence in September, and a sentence is expected in January.

Summing up his case Monday, Crini argued that testimony from homeless witness Antonio Curatolo, who said he saw Knox and Sollecito in the vicinity of the apartment the night of the murder, was "trustworthy". The prosecutor also argued to uphold testimony from Marco Quintavalle, a shopkeeper who said he saw Knox in front of his store the morning after the murder. Knox and Sollecito have both testified they were at his apartment the night of the murder and the morning after.

Crini also pointed to what he said were contradictions in Knox's account of the morning following the murder.

Knox said she returned to the flat to take a shower after spending the night at Sollecito's house, but failed to notice Kercher's room had been broken into and was a mess.

This part of her testimony is "not convincing", Crini maintained. Knox's attorney Luciano Ghirga said he had heard "nothing new" in the prosecutor's arguments.

Sollecito attended Monday's hearing, while Knox has opted to stay in the US.

The pair's chances of acquittal were recently seen to have been boosted when DNA evidence on the alleged murder weapon were cast into doubt.

New court-appointed experts said a kitchen knife found in Sollecito's kitchen did not in fact have Kercher's DNA on it, contrary to previous findings. Traces of DNA from Knox were found.

Knox and Sollecito's lawyers said her DNA was bound to be on it since they used it to cook and that destroyed the prosecution's case.

The Kercher family, from Couldson, Surrey, have welcomed the retrial and consistently stated they want to know who committed the crime along with Guede.

In an emotional appeal to the court earlier this month, Sollecito said he had been "persecuted" and was not "the ruthless killer" the prosecution was trying to depict.

He said the trial had been a "nightmare" for him.

Knox, in umpteen statements including in a best-selling book about her experience in the Italian justice system, has said the prosecutor who "invented" a picture of her as a sex-and-drug-crazed murderer had no evidence for his theory.