Post date: Sep 29, 2013 7:11:51 PM
Barbie Nadeau, who wrote a book on the sensational murder case involving American student Amanda Knox, says everyone was surprised the Italian high court threw out the acquittal and expects all evidence to be reviewed in the retrial beginning in Florence on Monday.
PERUGIA, ITALY (SEPTEMBER 27, 2011) (REUTERS) - American Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito will go back on trial in Italy on Monday (September 30) for the murder of her British roommate in 2007.
Dubbed "Foxy Knoxy" by a fascinated news media, Knox was found guilty in 2009 of killing 21-year-old Meredith Kercher in what was described as a drug-fuelled sexual assault.
After winning an appeal in 2011, Knox, and her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, also convicted of the murder, were released.The case is being tried again after Italy's highest court overturned the acquittals, noting "contradictions and inconsistencies".
Barbie Nadeau, a freelance journalist based in Rome who reports for a range of American media outlets including CNN, the Huffington Post and News Week, said the supreme court's decision had taken many by surprise.
Nadeau has followed Knox's case closely and documented it in her 2010 book "Angel Face: Sex, Murder and the Inside Story of Amanda Knox".
"No, I was very surprised that the high court chose to throw out the acquittal. I think everybody was really surprised. It was finished, it was done, Amanda Knox was home, Raffaele Sollecito was getting on with his life. But for the memory of Meredith Kercher and for her family I think it is very important that they take another look at this. It was done very quickly and if you look at the judges' reasonings they have very very valid points they make in terms of the way the appellate court acted in the second degree and in acquitting them of the murder conviction. For this reason, you know, it is a murder, a young girl lost her life, it's important to make sure justice is served," said Nadeau.
Lawyers for the Kercher family have welcomed the retrial, criticising the earlier ruling as "superficial".
Knox has always denied murdering Kercher, who was found with more than 40 wounds, including a deep gash in the throat, in the apartment they shared inPerugia, a picturesque town in central Italy that attracts students from around the world.
The Supreme Court said the possibility that Kercher was killed during a group sex game should be re-examined. It also noted that the one person still in jail for the murder, Ivory Coast-born Rudy Guede, who is serving a 16-year sentence, was unlikely to have committed the crime alone.
Nadeau said she expected the Florence court to ask for another review of the evidence.
"I think there will be a new review of the evidence and more of the evidence. At the appellate level, the independent examination of the evidence focused on three or four main pieces but the high court, according to their reasoning, decided that they need to see an examination of a fuller body of evidence, that which was used to convict Rudy Guede, that which was outside of the murder room and that which was even circumstantial. So, for that reason it seems very likely that this court is going to demand another review of the evidence," she said.
Nadeau said it was likely that Knox and Sollecito would be acquitted again but added that she expected the verdict to be one that would be more satisfactory to many following or involved in the case.
"I think it is very possible that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito will be acquitted again. But I think if they are acquitted again it will be with less controversy because this appellate court is going to be forced to do a better job and a more thorough job in their re-examination of the conviction," she said.
Knox is not expected to return to attend court in the country that jailed her - she says wrongly - for four years.
She told U.S. television this month that her decision not to return from Seattle for the re-trial was "common sense".
The American is not obliged to attend and can be represented by her lawyers. If found guilty, she would be able to appeal again, but if that failed, Italy could apply for her extradition.
"There is absolutely no legal reason the American government could hold Amanda Knox, there is no reason to keep her there and to deny an extradition, this is a private matter. We've seen cases before which involved American CIA agents and American military people who were not extradited back but those were military cases, this is a civil case and there is no reason the Americans could keep her in the United States," said Nadeau.
Sollecito, 29, who has also always professed his innocence, is planning to attend the retrial which opens in Florence on Monday, his father told Italian media this week.
In a memoir released earlier this year, Knox sought to reverse the image of a callous sexual deviant painted in many media reports after her initial conviction, and portrayed herself as a naive young woman railroaded by a foreign justice system.