In her own words this is how Amanda Knox sums up the Judge's ruling against her in the first trial:
The supposed motive was as far-fetched as a soap opera plot. "Amanda and Raffaele suddenly found themselves without any commitments; they met Rudy Guede by chance and found themselves together with him at the house on the Via della Pergola where . . . Meredith was alone," Massei wrote.
The judges and jury hypothesized that Raffaele and I were fooling around, and that Guede started raping Meredith because we turned him on. Instead of helping Meredith, we inexplicably and spontaneously joined Guede, because it was "an exciting stimulant that, although unexpected, had to be tried," he wrote. "[T]he criminal acts were carried out on the force of pure chance. A motive, therefore, of an erotic, sexually violent nature which, arising from the choice of evil made by Rudy, found active collaboration from Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito."
The report rejected the prosecution's claim that Meredith and I had had a contentious relationship. The judge wrote "the crime that was carried out . . . without any animosity or feelings of rancor against the victim . . ."
They allowed that there was no evidence of contact between Guede and me—no e-mails, phone calls, or eyewitnesses. They discounted the testimony of Hekuran Kokomani, the witness from the pretrial and the trial who said he threw olives at me and who "identified" me by the nonexistent gap between my teeth. And they conceded that Raffaele and I were not likely killers. Rather we were "two young people, strongly interested in each other, with intellectual and cultural curiosity, he on the eve of his graduation and she full of interests . . ."
Nonetheless, the report claimed, Raffaele and I "resolved to participate in an action aimed at forcing the will of Meredith, with whom they had, especially Amanda, a relationship of regular meetings and cordiality, to the point of causing her death . . . the choice of extreme evil was put into practice. It can be hypothesized that this choice of evil began with the consumption of drugs which had happened also that evening, as Amanda testified."
It continued: "Therefore it may be deduced that, accustomed to the consumption of drugs and the effects of the latter, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito participated actively in Rudy's criminal acts aimed at overcoming Meredith's resistance, subjugating her will and thus allowing Rudy to act out his lustful impulses . . ."
Another factor, the judge wrote, was that Raffaele and I read comic books and watched movies "in which sexuality is accompanied by violence and by situations of fear . . ."
He brought up the disputed theory that Raffaele's kitchen knife was the murder weapon, in addition to a new theory that I'd carried the knife in my "very capacious bag." Why would I? "It's probable, considering Raffaele's interest in knives, that Amanda was advised and convinced by her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, to carry a knife with her . . . during the night along streets that could have seemed not very safe to pass through at night by a girl."
The lining of my bag wasn't cut. The police found no blood in my bag. How can I prove what I didn't do?
The prosecution had based their case on misinterpreted and tainted forensic evidence and had relied heavily on speculation. But Judge Massei's faith was blind. Patrizia Stefanoni would not "offer false interpretations and readings," he wrote.
Despite this comprehensive indictment of the evidence presented against her, nobody has made a point-by-point rebuttal of Knox's interpretation of the judgement.
The case against the two defendants is farcical, and the "trial by the people" seems to find both guilty by dint of Knox's strange behaviour after the death of her friend. The suggestion that smoking dope somehow turned them into psychotic extras from "Reefer Madness" is laughable and at odds with the evidence about cannabis users, but it is clear that both Knox and Sollecito were nerdy and vulnerable youngsters.
Of course one person has been convicted of the murder of Kercher on substantial DNA, fingerprint and other circumstantial evidence - Rudy Guede. At the very least, part of his motivation was likely to be theft and there is disputed evidence of a break-in. However doubts have lingered that he acted alone, even though his modus operandi was usually that of a loner and an opportunist. Fundamentally, this is why Knox and Sollecito will never escape the shadow of this crime.
A reasonable interpretation of all the evidence available in the public domain about Kercher's death is that Guede, a petty criminal, probably acted alone. Kercher's memory will best be served by exonerating her from participating in a sordid sex game and recognising she was probably the innocent victim of a botched robbery, possibly when she recognised the burglar. Unfortunately the Italian legal system allows a level of theatricality and inference in court proceedings that will mean this simple conclusion will never be acceptable. A laughably unlikely scenario of a sex game gone wrong has tainted this case even more than the incompetence with which the crime scene was managed.
Occam's razor is a concept that, amongst a number of possible explanations for an event, the one that requires the fewest supporting assumptions should be selected.
In 2014 Rudy Guede will be eligible for parole, aged 27, with his whole life ahead of him. Meredith Kercher would have been 28. Who knows what the future holds for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, two innocent students caught up in the misogynistic and fanciful fury unleashed on Knox.