The Real Reason Amanda Knox's Murder Conviction Was Overturned

For decades, consumers of media have found pleasure in a wide variety of stories: hard news, celebrity gossip, entertainment, and so on. Another category that often dominates the headlines is the true-crime subgenre: It seems that Americans can't get enough when it comes to juicy stories of murder, particularly if it contains salacious twists and turns. The O.J. Simpson double-murder trial, the murder of JonBenét Ramsey, the Casey Anthony case: All are examples of true-crime stories becoming cultural touchstones.

One of the more compelling true-crime cases in recent decades is that of Amanda Knox, an American woman who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Though there was little to no evidence tying her to the crime, she found herself caught up in the slow-moving and haphazard gears of an Italian justice system keen to put someone behind bars, even if they were innocent, as Biography reported. Over the course of a few years, multiple court decisions, many of them contradictory, came down, seemingly one after another, but eventually ended with Knox and her alleged co-conspirator being cleared, once and for all, of all charges.

Between November 2, 2007, and January 2019, according to Biography, Amanda Knox and her alleged co-conspirators were at the subject of no fewer than eight separate rulings by various Italian courts. Over the course of those years, Knox was at one time sentenced to decades in prison and even serving her time, and then her conviction was overturned. However, she was tried and convicted again (Italian courts do not have the concept of "double jeopardy," like American courts do), but eventually cleared once and for all.

By all rights, she should have been ruled out as a suspect in the Meredith Kercher murder, according to The Christian Science Monitor. Simply put, there was never any evidence against her. There was no weapon, no motive, and no DNA, and actual physical evidence would tie someone else to the crime. Further, an Italian court ultimately ruled that "stunning flaws" occurred in the adjudication of Knox's case, including working from a baseless theory and ignoring possible contamination of the crime scene, as The Guardian noted.