Italy's highest appeals
body, the Court of Cassation, will hear the latest appeal next
March in the murder conviction of former American student Amanda
Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, legal sources told
ANSA Tuesday.
The court is scheduled to begin its review on March 25,
2015 of the case arising from the 2007 murder in the Umbrian
city of Perugia of British student Meredith Kercher.
Both Knox, who is now living in the United States, and
Sollecito who lives in Italy, have maintained their innocence in
the slaying of Kercher, who had been Knox's flatmate when the
pair were students in Perugia.
Earlier this year, a court in Florence convicted Knox and
Sollecito for the second time in the murder, concluding that
Kercher was killed when her throat was slashed by two separate
knives, wielded by Knox and Sollecito.
Knox and Sollecito are now appealing the Florence court's
decision to Italy's supreme Court of Cassation.
In January, the Florence court repeated the appeals-level
trial that had sentenced Knox to 28 and a half years in prison
and Sollecito to 25 years.
Knox and Sollecito were initially convicted of the murders
at the original trial in Perugia in 2009 and have served a total
of four years in prison including pre-trial custody.
That conviction was overturned on appeal two years later,
but in 2013, Italy's supreme court struck down those convictions
and ordered a repeat of the appeals trial, saying evidence
linking Knox and Sollecito to the murder scene had not been
properly considered.
The Florence court said that it heard "reliable" evidence
placing both defendants in the Perugia flat where Kercher was
killed, in "the immediate moments after the murder".
With them was a third person convicted of the killing in a
separate fast-track proceeding, Rudy Guede, a drifter from the
Ivory Coast.
The Florence court concluded that the homicide was sparked
by an argument between Kercher and Knox, possibly over the
cleanliness of the apartment, and not by a drug-fueled sex game
gone awry, as prosecutors said at the original trial.
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