By Rachel Stockton

The Amanda Knox verdict is in:  the jury found the young Seattle woman guilty of murdering her roommate, Meredith Kercher.  The case, which was largely circumstantial, has garnered an inordinate amount of medial attention, especially in Italy. 

Prosecutors claimed that Knox and Kercher were involved in a sex game that went awry; Knox has stated that the reason they came to this conclusion was because authorities found a sex toy in the apartment.

Spokesperson for Friends of Amanda Knox, Ann Bremner, stated on CNN that Italian juries are not sequestered during a trial, nor are they prohibited from reading and listening to accounts of both the crime and the trial, in the media.  This means that inflammatory articles which are not based on fact could have been perused and discussed among the jury for the duration of the trial.

The prosecutor in the case asked for a 100 year sentence; they came back with 26 years, which leads some to speculate that a compromise was made.  Italian juries do not have to agree unanimously – a majority vote is enough to convict. 

Knox’s family has maintained all along that Knox was wrongly accused of the crime.  However, pundits have surmised that several incidents likely led to the guilty verdict.  First of all, Knox told police she was in the apartment at the time of the murder.  Secondly, she tried to implicate another person for the crime (her boss); legal analysts have stated that this was the proverbial kiss of death. Why, after all, would Knox try to pass the buck unless she was guilty?

Bremner has an answer for that:  she’s young.  Knox left for Europe with high hopes of attending school and absorbing the culture while working toward her degree; she was ultimately confronted with a nightmarish situation that would be difficult for the most seasoned adult to have to endure, let alone a naïve and vulnerable teenager.

Knox’s family has stated that they will be relocating to Italy to assist in the appeal process.