The Incredulous Perugia Trial: Sentencing Report
Finally, the sentencing report by the jury who convicted Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito has been published. Only days before Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison for the murder or Meredith Kercher, we wrote a detailed article about the case and the media reactions around the world in relation to Italy (The Incredulous Perugia Trial: Ideal vs Integrity). Now, we are back to report on the reasoning behind the jury decision, which tells us what the judges believed to be the most likely truth behind the crime, based on the extensive witness reports, testimonials, and evidence they examined during the trial.
In sum, the jury decided that the murder was impulsive, and that Knox and Sollecito nursed no ill will towards the victim. Rather, the jury believed that the crime was a result of violence partly attributable to the suspects’ uninhibited behavior after getting high. It was further noted that Knox and Sollecito received a reduced sentence because they were young and had taken pity on the victim and covered Kercher’s body with the duvet.
The elements of proof deemed reliable by the court were the alleged murder weapon (a knife with Knox’s DNA on the handle and a trace amount of Kercher’s on the blade), the bra clasp with Sollecito’s DNA, the luminol-enhanced footprints attributed to Knox and Sollecito, as well as the multiple traces of mixed blood (Kercher’s) and DNA (Knox’s) in the apartment’s small bathroom, which indicated that also the door and lightswitch in the bathroom had been touched by someone with bloody hands or clothes. “Mixed biological traces belonging to Meredith and Amanda in the washbasin and bidet and seemed to indicate the cleaning of hands of feet,” the opinion read, going on to suggest that Knox’s skin tissues had rubbed off as she tried to scrub off Meredith’s blood in the bathroom.
Based on the premise that typical American female college students do not suddenly become transformed into murders upon their arrival in Italy (an argument we have shown to be devoid of any logic, in our previous article on the case, The Incredulous Perugia Trial: Ideal vs Integrity), various public figures feel compelled to voice their opinions: Donald Trump for example knows that Amanda Knox did not commit the crime, because he is “good at judging people”, and he asks people to boycott Italy because of this “obvious miscarriage of justice”. Oprah interviewed Knox’s parents in February 2010, who “never had a shadow of doubt about her innocence”, and basically said that Italian prosecutors should be ashamed of themselves.
But as the victim’s mother, Arline Kercher, said after the verdict was announced: “At the end of the day you have to go on the evidence because there’s nothing else.” And a pretty face doesn’t change that.
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[...] had closely followed the first trial, in which Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were found guilty of murdering her British flat mate, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia. This was one of the most dramatic [...]