Roundup: Definitive acquittal of Knox, Sollecito for murder dominates Italian media

The definitive acquittal of American Amanda Knox and Italian Raffaele Sollecito for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in 2007 dominated the headlines of Italian newspapers on Saturday.

On Friday night, the Italian Court of Cassation cleared both defendants "for not committing the crime", annulling the convictions of 28-and-a-half-year and 25-year jail sentences that Knox and Sollecito had been respectively given in a second appeal trial in 2014.

Whereas both defendants welcomed the acquittal with open relief, Meredith's mother Arline declared late on Friday night that she was "very shocked and surprised" by the ruling.

The final verdict of Italy's highest court put an end to an almost eight-year-long legal odyssey that drew an unprecedented international attention. Yet, it left many questions open among media observers and public opinion here.

Major newspapers are giving their own analysis to the court decision as much as they could, waiting for the full rationale behind the decision to be released within 90 days. Most of them described the ruling as astonishing.

"It is a clamorous verdict, on which nobody would have bet," wrote Fiorenza Sarzanini with Il Corriere della Sera, the popular daily in Italy.

"It wiped the outcome of the probe, and especially refuted another sentence that other judges of the same highest Court had delivered two years ago, believing Knox and Sollecito were certainly at the crime scene". Sarzanini described the acquittal for lack of evidence "a defeat for Meredith's family, who still have no justice".

Turin-based La Stampa newspaper commented with similar surprise, but less criticism." Acquitted for not committing the crime: the clamorous decision of the Supreme Court," Guido Ruotolo, senior journalist with a long experience in court reporting, wrote.

"Knox and Raffaele are innocent, but it does not mean the Meredith's murder is left unpunished," Ruotolo said."There is a murderer: is the Ivorian Rudy Guede, now serving a 16-year in jail sentence. We have to wait for the motivations, but it is clear the court dismantled the probe of the prosecutors in Perugia", where Meredith Kercher was killed in 2007.

The "Meredith case", as it became known in Italy, had been indeed a complicate process that included five trials and more than one turn of events.

Meredith Kercher was found dead in November 2007 in the city of Perugia, in the flat she shared with Amanda Knox and two other students. The 21-year-old girl had been stabbed to death and sexually assaulted, and her throat was slashed.

Knox, now 27, and her ex-boyfriend Sollecito, now 31, were arrested few days after the murder. According to prosecutors' initial thesis, Kercher was the victim of a twisted erotic game involving both of them. Knox and Sollecito have always claimed their innocence during the trial process.

A first grade court found them guilty of the murder in 2009. A third person, Rudy Guede from the Ivory Coast, was convicted of conspiracy to murder in a separate fast-track trial after pleading guilty. The judges stated that Guede had not acted alone.

In 2011, an appeal court overturned the convictions of Knox and Sollecito because of "lack of evidence". Both were freed after 4 years in jail, and Amanda Knox returned to the United States.

However, a new appeal jury convicted them for a second time in January 2014. The court of Cassation, Italy's highest court in Italy, had in fact ordered a retrial, accepting the prosecutors' argument that relevant DNA evidences had been disregarded.

Now, the top court's verdict on Friday cleared Knox and Sollecito for good, leaving Guede as the only accountable person for Meredith's death and no one to be convicted of acting with him.

The ruling was widely discussed by Italians, and the "Meredith case" was among the most popular stories posted on social media on Saturday.

Many comments found the verdict unfair, and expressed solidarity with Meredith's family and and sympathy for their possible suffering. Many criticized the unclear situation that resulted from the conflicting sentences. Endit