Italy's top court on Friday annulled the conviction of American Amanda Knox for the 2007 murder of her British flatmate and fully acquitted her in a surprise verdict capping nearly a decade of courtroom drama.
The brutal stabbing of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher, alleged sex games and multiple trials provided fodder for tabloids on both sides of the Atlantic and inspired books and films.
"I am tremendously relieved and grateful for the decision of the Supreme Court of Italy," Knox, 27, said in a statement provided by her U.S.-based attorney.
The Court of Cassation threw out the second guilty verdict against Knox and her Italian former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 31, for the murder, saying there was insufficient evidence to convict either of them.
South London-born Kercher was found stabbed to death in a house she shared with Knox in the medieval hill town of Perugia in 2007. Rudy Guede, originally from the Ivory Coast, is serving a 16-year sentence for the crime, but judges in the previous trials ruled he did not act alone.
It had been widely expected that, even if the court overturned the previous convictions, it would order a retrial. Instead, both Knox and Sollecito are now definitively cleared.
"The knowledge of my innocence has given me strength in the darkest times of this ordeal," Knox said, adding thanks to supporters whose "kindness has sustained me."
Knox and Sollecito, who faced some 28 years and 24 years in jail, respectively, have both already served four years in jail after an original conviction in 2009.
