Italian prosecutors seek to reinstate Amanda Knox’s murder conviction

Italian prosecutors have appealed the acquittal of Amanda Knox, an American student who was accused of murdering her British housemate Meredith Kercher in the university town of Perugia in 2007.

The Associated Press reported that prosecutors filed an 112-page appeal requesting that Italy's highest criminal court reinstate the murder convictions against 24-year-old Knox and her former boyfriend, 27-year-old Raffaele Sollecito. 

The pair, who had been sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison respectively, were acquitted in October 2011 after four years in prison, AFP reported. 

Much of the case in the appeals court centered on DNA evidence on a knife that was thought to be the murder weapon, which a review suggested could be flawed, BBC News reported.

Knox returned to her home town of Seattle immediately after her acquittal, and cannot be extradited back to Italy, according to AFP.

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Rudy Guede, an Ivory-Coast-born local, is the only person still in prison for the crime, which prosecutors described as a frenzied sex attack, according to AFP. 

Giovanni Galati, a prosecutor based in Perugia, insisted on Tuesday that the acquittal was riddled with "omissions and many mistakes" and said he was "convinced" that Knox and her then boyfriend were responsible for the murder, The Telegraph reported. Galati called Knox's release "contradictory and illogical." 

A statement released by the Knox family spokesman Tuesday said the appeals trial clearly established Knox's innocence and called the latest appeal "simply another example of harassment by the prosecution against Amanda," the AP reported.

The Italian appeal comes a week after Knox's lawyers appealed a separate conviction brought against her by her former employer, bar owner Patrick Lumumba, who accused Knox of slander, AFP reported. In early police interrogations, Knox had said that Lumumba was behind the murder.  

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The court is expected to make a ruling on the case, which has inspired books and films and captured worldwide attention, towards the end of the year, according to the Telegraph. The court is not permitted to summon new evidence, and will decide the case purely on evidence that has already been presented. 

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Meredith Kercher, 21, was found dead in a pool of blood in the house she shared with Knox in Perugia, Italy in 2007. In the October acquittal, the court said the guilty verdicts against Knox and her boyfriend were not corroborated by any evidence, and that the court hadn't proven they were in the house when Kercher was killed.