On Tuesday, Italy's high court said the appeals court's acquittal of Amanda Knox in 2011 was filled with “deficiencies, contradictions and illogical” conclusions when it ruled that she was not guilty of murdering roommate Meredith Kercher in Perugia in 2007.
The high court has ordered that Knox be retried.
The high court said that the appeals court glossed over circumstantial evidence, such as Knox blaming another man for the crime and saying she pictured herself in the kitchen that night, covering her ears from Kercher’s screams. Knox has said Italian police pressured her into giving those early statements.
Knox, 25, currently a student at the University of Washington, can be tried in absentia and will not have to return to Italy.
“Since there was no evidence, there is no evidence, and there never will be any evidence, our feeling is that this next review should result in the same verdict — one that demonstrates that Amanda Knox should be exonerated, and found not guilty,” her American attorney Theodore Simon told TODAY Wednesday.
Knox, a student from Seattle, and then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of murdering Kercher, and Knox spent four years in an Italian prison. Rudy Guede of the Ivory Coast was convicted of the murder in a separate trial and is serving a 16-year sentence. Knox and Sollecito were acquitted in 2011.
The high court also said the appeals court should have taken into account that Kercher’s murder may have been part of a sex game involving multiple people, a theory that Italian prosecutors didn’t address in the last trial.