Amanda Knox caused fatal wound to Meredith Kercher, Italian court rules.
An Italian court has said Amanda Knox delivered the fatal blow to the British exchange student Meredith Kercher in a group attack on her, driven by a desire to bully and humiliate the 21-year-old.
In reasoning made public three months after it sentenced Knox, the Seattle-based student, to 28 years and six months in prison, the Florence appeals court said it had rejected the defence's argument that Rudy Guede, an Ivorian man already serving time for the murder, had acted alone.
The injuries on Kercher's body were indicative of multiple attackers, it said. But, while Guede could have been motivated by "sexual instinct", it was not credible to believe that the murder had occurred as part of a group sex game gone wrong, as had been suggested previously, as this was incompatible with what was known of Kercher's character.
Rather, the court said, domestic tensions between the two female housemates had developed into a full-blown conflict.
"It is a matter of fact that at a certain point in the evening events accelerated. The English girl was attacked by Amanda Marie Knox, by Raffaele Sollecito, who was backing up his girlfriend, and by Rudi Hermann Guede, and constrained within her own room," the document, running to more than 300 pages, said.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/29/amanda-knox-fatal-wound-meredith-kercher-court
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