A Florence court said Tuesday
that the 2007 murder of British exchange student Meredith
Kercher was sparked by an argument with her American flatmate
Amanda Knox, possibly over the cleanliness of their apartment,
and not by a drug-fueled sex game gone awry.
In their written explanation of their January 30 decision
to find Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito
guilty of murder, the judges pointed to "reliable" evidence
placing both defendants in the Perugia flat where Kercher was
killed in "the immediate moments after the murder".
Knox got 28 and a half years and Sollecito 25 years at the
retrial, which they are now appealing to Italy's supreme Court
of Cassation.
Judges said Kercher was raped and stabbed to death as a
result of a "mounting quarrel" with Knox, ruling out the initial
prosecution theory that Kercher was killed after a drug-fuelled
sex game gone wrong that also involved Sollecito and Ivory Coast
national Rudy Guede.
Guede's DNA was found inside and all over Kercher's body as
well as in her bedroom, where she was found naked with her
throat cut.
He was caught while fleeing the country soon after the
killing. He agreed to a fast-track trial and is serving 16 years
in prison.
In Tuesday's written explanation, the Florence court also
said Sollecito's DNA was on the clasp of the bra Kercher wore on
the night she was murdered, which placed him at the scene of the
crime.
The court also said that Kercher was killed by neck wounds
from two knives, one wielded by Knox and the other by Sollecito.
"The homicidal intent of the aggressors is clear. Once the
assault became sexual, and in the face of the victim's
resistance, the attackers decided to end Meredith's life in
order to silence her and thereby escape punishment," the judges
wrote.
Sollecito's defense team claimed the Italian man's DNA was
found on Kercher's severed bra clasp because of crime-scene
contamination.
The pair were found guilty in 2009 and acquitted in 2011
after defense experts proved DNA evidence presented at the
original trial was unsound.
Specifically, they argued that reported traces of Knox's
DNA on the handle of a kitchen knife found in Sollecito's flat,
and of Kercher's on the tip, did not actually exist and blamed
crime-scene contamination for Sollecito's DNA on Kercher's
severed bra clasp.
That bra clasp was recovered from the floor of Kercher's
room six weeks after the murder, after many people had walked
through the unsecured crime scene.
Court-appointed forensic experts who looked into the
handling of the investigation produced a damning report,
counting some 50 errors made by Italian crime-scene
investigators as they examined the murder scene.
These included simple breaches of protocol such as
gathering evidence using dirty gloves, not covering hair and not
changing shoe covers as well as putting items in plastic bags
instead of paper ones.
Their report was vital to the acquittal of Knox and
Sollecito.
But the supreme Court of Cassation last year quashed the
acquittals over aspects of the DNA evidence it argued had not
been properly examined and ordered a repetition of the
appeals-level trial.
Sollecito and Knox have both already served a total of four
years in prison, including pre-trial custody, after their
initial conviction in 2009.
Knox is now in America while judges prepare an extradition
request that is unlikely to be granted.
Sollecito is in Italy ahead of the high-court re-appeal,
expected later this year.
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