PERUGIA, Italy — American college student Amanda Knox was found guilty of murdering her British roommate and sentenced to 26 years in prison today after a year-long trial that gripped Italy and drew intense media attention.
Her Italian ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, also was convicted and sentenced to 25 years. They also were convicted of sexual assault in the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, 21, a student from England.
As soon as the judge read the verdict just after midnight following about 13 hours of deliberations, Knox began weeping and murmured, “No, no,” then hugged one of her attorneys.
Minutes later, the 22-year-old Knox, who is from Seattle, and the 25-year-old Sollecito were put in police vans and driven back to jail.
Prosecutors had sought life imprisonment, Italy’s stiffest sentence. Courts often give less severe punishment than what prosecutors demand.
Knox’s father, Curt Knox, asked whether he would fight on for his daughter, replied, with tears in his eyes: “Hell, yes.”
“This is just wrong,” said her stepmother, Cassandra Knox, turning around immediately after hearing the verdict. Her family had insisted she was innocent and a victim of character assassination.
Kercher family attorney Francesco Maresca called the verdict and sentence “satisfactory.”
Knox and Sollecito were charged with murder and sexual assault in the slaying of Kercher more than two years ago. All three were studying in Perugia in Italy’s central Umbria region at the time.
Kercher’s body was found in a pool of blood with her throat slit Nov. 2, 2007, in the bedroom of the house she shared with Knox. Prosecutors contended she was murdered the previous night.
The prosecution said Knox and Kercher started arguing, and Knox joined Sollecito and another man, Rudy Hermann Guede, in brutally attacking and sexually assaulting the Briton under “the fumes of drugs and possibly alcohol.”
Guede, an Ivory Coast citizen who is sentenced to 30 years in prison in the attack, is appealing his conviction.
