U.S. student gets 26 years for killing British roommate

Ex-boyfriend sentenced to 25 years

Last Updated: Friday, December 5, 2009 

CBC News

Accused murder suspect Amanda Knox, an American, awaits her verdict from an Italian jury. (Pier Paolo Cito/Associated Press)

An Italian jury has convicted American student Amanda Knox of sexually assaulting and murdering her British roommate, sentencing her to 26 years in prison Friday.

Knox's boyfriend at the time of the killing, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, was sentenced to 25 years.

The eight-member jury, along with two judges, had began deliberations Friday after sequestering themselves in the town of Perugia's courthouse.

Knox, 22, was charged in the 2007 slaying of Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old studying in Perugia. All three — Knox, Kercher and Sollecito — were students in the central Italian city.

Prosecutors said that Knox, Sollecito and a third person — Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast citizen — met at the women's apartment the night of Nov.1. After Knox and Kercher got into an argument, the trio attacked and sexually assaulted her, prosecutors said. They were acting, according to the prosecutors, under "the fumes of drugs and possibly alcohol."

Kercher's body was found the next day, her throat slit.

Guede has already been tried, convicted, and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He maintains that he was in the house the night of the murder but did not kill Kercher, and is appealing his conviction.

DNA evidence that the prosecutors used against the defendants was disputed in court. Defence lawyers argued the DNA traces found at the scene were too small to be attributed with absolute certainty.

A knife found at the scene had Kercher's DNA on the blade and Knox's on the handle, prosecutors said. The defence lawyers contended that the weapon was too large to match the fatal wounds on Kercher's throat.