Landmark Cases
Amanda Knox Case
Also Known As Murder of Meredith Kercher
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Meredith Kercher, a British exchange student, was murdered in Perugia, Italy, on November 1, 2007. Rudy Guede was convicted of the murder and sentenced to thirteen years. Kercher's American roommate, Amanda Knox, and Knox's Italian boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, were separately tried, convicted, and after a long sequence of appeals, definitively acquitted. A court-ordered review of the contested forensic DNA evidence used against Knox and Sollecito, conducted by independent experts, found numerous basic errors in how that evidence had been gathered and analyzed. On March 27, 2015, Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation quashed the convictions for good, citing what it called stunning flaws and culpable omissions in the murder investigation, and noted that no evidential trace of Kercher's own DNA had ever been found on the alleged murder weapon despite that weapon's use to support the earlier guilty verdicts.
Facts
Case YearSourced to the subject's own account LocationSourced to the subject's own account Investigative or Reform SignificanceSourced to the subject's own accountA widely studied case of contested forensic DNA evidence, illustrating how contamination and procedural error in evidence collection can undermine a case built substantially on DNA profiling. 1 Case StatusSourced to the subject's own accountClosed; Rudy Guede convicted of murder (13 years). Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were convicted, then acquitted on appeal, reconvicted, and finally and definitively acquitted by Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation on March 27, 2015. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Exemplifies
Why this is disputed. Amanda Knox's 2007 conviction was overturned on appeal, reinstated, and finally quashed by Italy's highest court in 2015; unlike the Central Park Five or West Memphis Three, no alternative perpetrator was conclusively established for the wider public record on Knox's own conviction, so its use as a wrongful-conviction exemplar is treated here as debated rather than settled.
Investigated By
The Questura di Perugia's Squadra Mobile (flying squad), a Polizia di Stato investigative unit under Detective Superintendent Monica Napoleoni, led the murder investigation and the arrests of Knox, Sollecito and Guede.
Used In
A court-ordered independent review found numerous basic errors in how the contested DNA evidence was gathered and analyzed.
Sources
Frequently Asked Questions
Was Amanda Knox ultimately found guilty of Meredith Kercher's murder?
No. Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were separately tried, convicted, and after a long sequence of appeals, definitively acquitted. An independent court-ordered review found numerous basic errors in how the forensic DNA evidence used against them had been gathered and analyzed, and Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation quashed the convictions for good on March 27, 2015. Rudy Guede was convicted of the murder separately and sentenced to thirteen years.Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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