U.S. Student Convicted Of Murder In Italy [True Crime Documentary]

U.S. Student Convicted Of Murder In Italy [True Crime Documentary]

Amanda Knox, an American student studying abroad in Italy in 2007, was found guilty after a year-long trial for the murder of her British roommate. Knox received a 26-year sentence for murder and sexual assault, avoiding the country's harshest life term. Rafaelle Sollecito, her ex-boyfriend, was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Knox, 22, was charged in November 2007 with the murder of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy. The juicy story received a lot of attention from the media in three nations. Prosecutors claimed Knox was a promiscuous party girl who stabbed Kercher to death in a fit of passion after the British 21-year-old refused to play a sex game with Knox and Sollecito and was sexually raped by a third accomplice, Rudy Hermann Guede.

Guede, an Ivory Coast native, chose a separate, expedited trial and was found guilty of murder and sexual assault in October 2008, receiving a 30-year sentence, but Italian prosecutors claim Knox and her boyfriend were accomplices.

Kercher's bra clasp and small traces of her DNA on a knife were also challenged by defense counsel, who said that the clasp was discovered six weeks after the investigation and that the knife didn't fit Kercher's wounds. Meanwhile, Knox maintained her innocence in a passionate closing speech, declaring, "I'm not a serial killer. I'm afraid of being labeled as something I'm not."

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