Murder of A Student

Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher (28 December 1985 – 1 November 2007) was a British student on exchange from the University of Leeds who was killed at the age of 21 in Perugia, Italy. Kercher was discovered lifeless on the floor of her bedroom. By the time the bloodstained fingerprints at the spectacle were recognized as belonging to Rudy Guede, police had charged Kercher's American roommate, Amanda Knox, and Knox's Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito. The subsequent trials of Knox and Sollecito received international publicity, with forensic specialists and jurists taking a significant view of the evidence supporting the preliminary guilty verdicts.

Guede was tried individually in a fast-track method and in October 2008 was found guilty of the sexual onslaught and killing of Kercher. He later exhausted the appeals process and started serving a 16-year sentence. On December 4, 2020, an Italian court-sanctioned that Guede could finish his term doing community service.

Knox and Sollecito were released after nearly four years following their acquittal at a second-level trial, even though Knox was convicted to three years' imprisonment for cruelly accusing an innocent. Knox instantly returned to the United States.

The appeals verdicts of acquittal were declared null, nonetheless, for "manifest illogicalities" by the Supreme Court of Cassation of Italy in 2013. The appeals prosecutions had to be repeated; they took place in Florence, where the two were sentenced again in 2014.

The conviction of Knox and Sollecito was ultimately annulled by the Supreme Court on 27 March 2015. The Supreme Court of Cassation invoked the provision of art. 530 § 2. of Italian Procedure Code ("reasonable doubt") and ordered that no distant trial should be held, which resulted in their acquittal and end of the case. The verdict pointed out that as scientific indication was "central" to the case, there were "glaring defiances" or "amnesia" and "culpable blunders of investigation activities".