Cassation Court to hear Knox, Sollecito appeal in March 2015

(ANSA) - Perugia, September 30 - 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.