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Pier Paolo Cito/AP
Amanda Knox with one of her lawyers, Luciano Ghirga, during a hearing in her appeals trial in Perugia, Italy.
Amanda Knox
Tearful Knox insists Italian courts made "enormous mistake"
The American student convicted of killing her British roommate breaks down as she insists she is not guilty of wrongdoing.
AMANDA KNOX broke down in tears in court this morning as she told an Italian appeals court that her conviction for the killing of a British fellow exchange student was an “enormous mistake”.
A tearful Knox said her life had been “broken” by having to spend three years in jail, and said in her emotional 20-minute address to the court that she had been “unjustly convicted” for the murder of Meredith Kercher.
“To Meredith’s family and loved ones, I would like to say that I am sorry that Meredith is not here. What you’re going through and what Meredith went through is incomprehensible and unacceptable,” Knox said.
“How is it possible that I could be capable of such violence? How could I commit evil against a friend of mine?”
Two others – Raffaele Sollecito, an Italian whom Knox was dating at the time, and an Ivorian man Rudy Guede – were also convicted of the killing. Prosecutors claim that Guede sexually attacked Kercher before she was held down and stabbed in an attack that was apparently without motive.
Knox was convicted of the killing last year and sentenced to 26 years in prison.
Detectives at the time recovered a knife with samples of Knox’s DNA on the handle and Kercher’s on the blade; Knox’s legal team said they would be seeking a re-examination of that evidence.
Samples of Knox’s DNA was also found in Kercher’s blood, in a bathroom the two shared at a house in Perugia where both were on foreign exchange.
Knox said at the time that she had been in the house at the time of the killing; she now claims she was with Sollecito in his house at the time. The knife carrying the women’s DNA was recovered from his house.
