Amanda Knox Murder Conviction Overturned By Italy High Court

Mar 28, 2015 09:12 PM EDT

After eight years of hardship, Amanda Knox's Italian nightmare is over. On Friday, the Supreme Court of Italy acquitted her and former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito of the murder of British Meredith Kercher.

Knox and Kercher used to share a flat in Perugia, an Italian university town. Kercher was murdered and sexually assaulted in November 2007 and after two years, an Italian court found Knox and Sollecito guilty and sentenced her to 26 years in prison, plus one more year for slander. Sollecito got 25 years.

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After four years, they were acquitted and got their liberties in 2014. Knox returned to Seattle where she was tried and convicted in absentia. In the same year, a Florence appeals court overturned the lower court decision.

Along with the reversal, the Florence court imposed a new prison term of 28 ½ years for Knox and 25 years for Sollecito.

Giulia Bongiorno, Knox's lawyer in Italy, appealed the Florence court decision which the High Court of Cassation deliberated on Friday noon. Had the high court upheld the Florence court's decision, Knox would be extradited to Italy and return to jail.

However, the court favored her and Sollecito. What saved Knox was her original statement to the police which was never entered as evidence and later changed. In her statement, Knox pointed to a Congolese bar owner as the one who killed Mercer, an exchange student from Leeds.

Rudy Guede, the Ivory Coast native who grew up in Perugia, was convicted of Mercer's murder in a separate trial. He is serving a 16-year sentence. Knox said she was in their apartment when Guede raped and killed Mercer. She told the police she even had to cover her ears to drown out the screams of Mercer whose throat was slashed on November 2, 2007.

Guede admitted to being in the apartment of Knox and Mercer on the day that Mercer was murdered. His DNA was also found in several places in the flat. However, Guede claimed Knox and another man were his accomplices in killing Mercer.

Asked for a comment by media on the Italian Supreme Court's decision, Knox said, "Right now I'm still absorbing what all this means and what comes to mind is my gratitude for life that's been given to me," quotes Fox.