14 DAY TRIAL // Hours after the Italian Supreme Court found her guilty of murder in the retrial of the 2007 case and sentenced her to 28 years and 8 months in prison, Amanda Knox was on ABC’s Good Morning America to talk about the shocking verdict and what she planned to do next.
Knox was accused of killing roommate Meredith Kercher with the help of her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and staging the whole thing to look like a robbery. They both spent 4 years in an Italian prison during the trial and were acquitted in 2011.
In March last year, the Supreme Court ordered a retrial, with Knox saying from the start she would not return to Italy for it. She also stressed that she was confident she would not be found guilty since the justice system had already ruled she was innocent of the heinous crime.
This would explain her surprise upon learning the new verdict. Knox tells Robin Roberts that she watched the trial online with her family, from Seattle, but she’s still having a hard time accepting the reality of the ruling.
Video of her emotional interview is embedded below.
“It really hit me like a train. I did not expect this to happen. I really expected so much better from the Italian justice system. They found me innocent once before,” she says, barely able to fight back tears.
She doesn’t blame Meredith’s family for wanting the retrial though, but she does say that they’re looking in the wrong place for the person or persons responsible for the murder.
“I will never go willingly back to the place where… I’m going to fight this to the very end. It’s not right and it’s not fair. No, this is wrong and I'm going to do everything I can to prove it,” she says.
“I just want [the Kerchers] to know that I really understand that this is incredibly difficult, that they’ve also been on this never ending thing and when the case has been messed up so much, like a verdict is no longer consolation for them,” Knox continues.
Knox will appeal the ruling but, other than that, she can’t do anything at this point but hope the US won’t extradite her to Italy.