Amanda Knox was a ‘faithful woman in love’ says defence lawyer

Counsel for Raffaele Sollecito compares her to cartoon character Jessica Rabbit, saying she was ‘not bad – just drawn that way’ There was “no trace” of either Amanda Knox or her former Italian boyfriend in the room where Meredith Kercher was murdered, a court hearing their appeal was told on Tuesday. Knox, who was depicted as a witch at the previous hearing, was more like Jessica Rabbit in the 1988 animated film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, according to one of her lawyers. “She can be seen as a man-eater. But in fact she was a faithful woman in love,” said the first defence lawyer to sum up before the judges and jury who will decide if Knox and her ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, are freed. Giulia Bongiorno, counsel for Sollecito, quoted the cartoon vamp: “I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.” And jabbing a finger at the prosecutors, she said: “They drew her that way”. Her brief foray into the world of animated cartoon was the prelude to a vigorous assault on the prosecution case in which she came within a hair’s breadth of claiming that, like Roger Rabbit, her client and his former girlfriend had been framed. In 2009, a lower court decided Sollecito and Knox murdered Kercher in a drug-fuelled sex game with a third man, Rudy Guede. Yet, said Bongiorno, ‘in the room of the crime, there are no traces of either Amanda or Raffaele. This is the absolute truth’. The only alleged evidence was a trace of Sollecito’s DNA on Kercher’s bra clasp, and that was evidence “torn apart by the experts’ report”. In June, two Rome university professors appointed by the court to review the forensic findings had reported the DNA could have got there by contamination. The bra clasp lay at the scene of the crime for more than six weeks. The experts also reported that DNA attributed to Kercher on the alleged murder weapon was not necessarily hers. The knife bore signs that it had been handled by Sollecito and Knox, but was in the young Italian’s kitchen and likely therefore to have been handled by both. As a result of the experts’ report, Bongiorno said: “Nothing connects Raffaele Sollecito to this crime … The few indications were to do with Amanda Knox and have been transferred to him. There are people who acquire a family along with a girlfriend. He acquired a crime.” But, added his lawyer, there was “nothing on Amanda either”. Sollecito was a 23-year-old computer science student at the university of Perugia when he was arrested for the murder. His lawyer warned the court against being misled by the prosecution’s emphasis on the number of judges who had endorsed its case. A footprint in Kercher’s bedroom was ascribed to her client and that version was accepted as fact by judges up to and including Italy’s highest appeals court. It then turned out to belong to Rudy Guede, she said. Amanda Knox Italy Meredith Kercher Europe United States John Hooper guardian.co.uk

Posted by on September 27, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.