AFP/Rome

Judges at Italy’s top court retired to chambers yesterday to consider whether to uphold the murder conviction of Amanda Knox in what could be the final act of an eight-year legal drama.
The American and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted last year for a second time of taking part in the 2007 killing of Meredith Kercher, a British student with whom the then 20-year-old Knox shared a house in the university town of Perugia.
In final arguments to the Court of Cassation, Sollecito’s lawyer said last year’s ruling in Florence had been flawed, citing summing up mistakes on the number of stab wounds inflicted on Kercher’s neck and a bloody footprint being described as that of a woman, when it belonged to a man.
“This is just a small taste of the mistakes that mean this verdict was a miscarriage of justice,” Giulia Bongiorno told the court.
She also pleaded for her client’s case to be disassociated from that of his former girlfriend.
“Raffaele Sollecito is an innocent who finds himself involved in extraordinary events without realising it,” she said.
“He’s like Forrest Gump. I ask you to annul the conviction,” he said in a reference to the naive, slow-witted  character in the 1994 film.
The six judges must now decide whether to confirm once and for all that the Italian judicial system regards the convictions as safe.
If they do, Sollecito could be taken straight back to jail while the absent Knox is likely to become the subject of a wrangle over whether she should be extradited from the United States back to Italy to join him behind bars.
The pair have already spent four years in jail – two on remand and two after their initial conviction for murder in 2009.
Alternatively, the judges could send the case back to the appeal stage, opening the door to one or both of the defendants being acquitted.
Kercher, 21, died after being stabbed 47 times and having her throat slashed.
Her half-naked body was found in a pool of blood in a back room of the house she shared with Knox.
Ivory Coast-born drifter Rudy Guede was jailed for Kercher’s murder in 2008, but the judge in his trial ruled that he could not have acted alone.
Prosecutors believe Knox and Sollecito fatally slashed Kercher while Guede held her down. Her supporters see her as an innocent abroad who fell victim to a flawed judicial system.


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