Amanda Knox said Friday she will fight the reinstated guilty verdict against her and an ex-boyfriend in the 2007 slaying of a British roommate in Italy and vowed to “never go willingly” to face her fate in that country’s judicial system.
I’m going to fight this to the very end
“I’m going to fight this to the very end,” she said in an interview with Robin Roberts on ABC’s Good Morning America.
But she could effectively be trapped in the United States for the rest of her life if President Barack Obama’s government decides to protect her from extradition to Italy.
If her new conviction stands after further appeals, Italian authorities must decide whether to ask the U.S. to hand her over under the 1983 extradition treaty between the two countries.
Knox said she was caught off guard by the decision of the Italian court.
“It hit me like a train. I didn’t expect this to happen. They found me innocent before; how could they?”
She told Good Morning America that she has gone through “waves of reaction” and it’s “only on my way here that I got my first cry.”
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The University of Washington student was sentenced to 28 1/2 years in prison, raising the spectre of a long legal battle over her extradition.
Knox, 26, said she and her family “have suffered greatly from this wrongful persecution.”
“This is an experience that I have to testify to, that really horrible things can happen and you have to stand up for yourself,” she said.
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John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, would ultimately be responsible for either approving a request and forwarding it to the U.S. justice department for processing in the courts, or rejecting it.
Knox would also then be under threat of arrest and deportation to Italy if she travelled to any other country that holds an extradition treaty with Rome. This includes Canada, several major Latin American states, Australia, New Zealand and most of Europe.
Asked at a briefing in March last year what the state department would do, Patrick Ventrell, a spokesman, said: “We never talk about extradition from this podium in terms of individual cases.”
ABC / HANDOUTAmanda Knox, right, during an exclusive TV interview with Robin Roberts, left, at Good Morning America in New York.
AP Photo/Mark LennihanAmanda Knox smiles during a television interview, Friday, Jan. 31, 2014 in New York. Knox said she will fight the reinstated guilty verdict against her and an ex-boyfriend in the 2007 slaying of a British roommate in Italy and vowed to "never go willingly" to face her fate in that country's judicial system.
AP Photo/Mark LennihanAmanda Knox, 26, said she and her family “have suffered greatly from this wrongful persecution.”
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan“This is an experience that I have to testify to, that really horrible things can happen and you have to stand up for yourself,” Amanda Knox said.
AP Photo/Mark LennihanAmanda Knox wipes her nose with a tissue while making a television appearance, Friday, Jan. 31, 2014 in New York. Knox said she will fight the reinstated guilty verdict against her and an ex-boyfriend in the 2007 slaying of a British roommate in Italy. "I'm going to fight this to the very end," she said in an interview with Robin Roberts on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Knox had remained in Seattle during the trial. David Marriott, a family spokesman, said Knox awaited the ruling Thursday at her mother’s home. After the decision was announced, a person believed to be Knox emerged from the house. That person, surrounded by others and covered by a coat, got into a vehicle and was driven away.
Knox said in a written statement that she was “frightened and saddened,” she “expected better from the Italian justice system,” and “this has gotten out of hand.”
When asked how Knox was doing, her mother, Edda Mellas, said: “She’s upset. How would you be?”
AP PhotoA woman believed to be Amanda Knox, center, is hidden under a jacket while being escorted from her mother's home to a car by family members , Thursday, Jan. 30, 2014, in Seattle.
Meredith Kercher was found in a pool of blood with her throat slit on Nov. 2, 2007, in their appartment. Knox and Sollecito were arrested a few days later and served four years in prison before an appeals court acquitted them in 2011.
FilesMeredith Kercher.
The court reinstated a guilty verdict first handed down against Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in 2009. The verdict was overturned in 2011, but Italy’s supreme court vacated that decision and sent the case back for a third trial in Florence.
Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Lawyers for the pair have vowed to appeal the conviction.
Knox’s ex-boyfriend left Italy and drove to Austria while an appeals court deliberated his fate, police said Friday, but he eventually returned to Italy and surrendered his passport following their joint conviction.
Sollecito’s lengthy travels were revealed on the same day that Knox made clear she would never voluntarily return to Italy.
“I think it’s somewhat significant that, before the sentence was handed down, he left Florence where he had been and traveled many kilometers to get close to two frontiers, Slovenia and Austria,” Ortolan said. “It is a bit perplexing.”
AP Photo/Antonio Calanni Meredith Kercher's sister Stephanie, left, and brother Lyle, talk during a press conference in Florence, Italy, Friday, Jan. 31, 2014, the day after an appeals court sentenced Amanda Knox to 28 ½ years in prison and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito to 25 years for the 2007 murdering of Meredith Kercher in Perugia, central Italy. For Kercher’s family, the verdict was another step in what has been more than six years of uncertainty about how Meredith died and finding justice.
Sollecito’s lawyer, Luca Maori, insisted his client was in the area of Italy’s northeastern border with Austria on Thursday because that’s where his current girlfriend lives. He said Sollecito went voluntarily to police to surrender his passport and ID papers.
AP Photo/Paolo GiovanniniAmanda Knox co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito, at right driving the car, leaves the Udine police station, northern Italy, Friday, Jan 31, 2014.
But the head of the Udine police squad, Massimiliano Ortolan, said police were tipped off that Sollecito had checked into a hotel in Venzone, on the Italian side of the border, and they went to find him there, waking him and his girlfriend up Friday morning and bringing him to the police station in Udine.
No arrest warrant had been issued by the Florence court. But the court demanded that Sollecito turn over his passport and ID papers to prevent him from leaving the country.
“I don’t know what I would do if they imprisoned him. It’s maddening,” Knox told GMA.
Since the court didn’t order Sollecito detained, he was freed Friday afternoon and was seen driving away with his girlfriend.
In her statement, Knox acknowledged the family of Meredith Kercher, her roommate in Italy.
“First and foremost it must be recognized that there is no consolation for the Kercher family. Their grief over Meredith’s terrible murder will follow them forever. They deserve respect and support,” she said.
For Kercher’s family, the verdict was another step in what has been more than six years of uncertainty about how Meredith died and finding justice.
“I think we are still on the journey of the truth and it may be the fact that we don’t ever really know what happened that night, which will be something we have to come to terms with,” said Stephanie Kercher, the victim’s sister who attended the verdict with her brother Lyle.
“It’s hard to feel anything at the moment because we know it will go to a further appeal,” Lyle Kercher said. “No matter what the verdict was, it never was going to be a case of celebrating anything.”
Knox said she has written a letter to the family of her slain British roommate, Meredith Kercher, expressing sympathy for the legal ordeal that continues more than six years after she was stabbed and sexually assaulted.
AP Photo/Mark LennihanAmanda Knox puts her hand to her face while making a television appearance, Friday, Jan. 31, 2014 in New York. Knox said she will fight the reinstated guilty verdict against her and an ex-boyfriend in the 2007 slaying of a British roommate in Italy.
“I want them to know I understand this is incredibly difficult. They also have been on this never-ending thing. When the case has been messed up so much, a verdict is no longer a consolation for them,” Knox said during Friday’s interview.
“And just the very fact that they don’t know what happened is horrible,” Knox said.
“They deserve respect and the consolation of some kind of acknowledgement,” she said. “I really wish them the best.”
Knox implored officials in Italy to fix problems with the justice system, and she blamed overzealous prosecutors and a “prejudiced and narrow-minded investigation” for what she called a perversion of justice and wrongful conviction.
TIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty ImagesThis picture taken on October 3, 2011 shows Amanda Knox, centre, breaking into tears as she leaves the court after ther acquittal in the Meredith Kercher' murder at Perugia's court.
Some supporters of Knox have argued that having been acquitted in 2011, she would be protected under the U.S. constitution from “double jeopardy”.
Yet the U.S.-Italy extradition treaty only protects Americans who face prosecution again in Italy for an offence that has already been dealt with by the U.S. “This is not applicable in this situation,” said Prof Julian Ku, who teaches transnational law at Hofstra University in New York.
For extradition candidates such as Knox, who have already been convicted, the treaty states that Italy must merely produce “a brief statement of the facts of the case,” as well as the text of the laws governing the crime committed, the punishment the person would receive, and its statute of limitations.
The Obama administration could find some reason to decline a request. However, it would need to weigh this against the potential blow to cooperation on organized crime and other areas between the two governments.