Amanda Knox Acquittal: ‘Glaring Errors' Led To Overturning Of Guilty Verdict, Says Italy’s Top Court

Italy’s top criminal court said Monday that it overturned Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend’s guilty verdict because of “glaring errors” and a poor case presented by prosecutors. The Court of Cassation issued its formal written explanation, as required by Italian law, for its March ruling acquitting the duo of murder charges in the killing of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher.

The court reportedly said that there was an "absolute lack of biological traces" of Knox and her then-boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, in the room or on the victim's body, which was found in a pool of blood in 2007 in an apartment that Knox and Kercher shared in the university town of Perugia.

The path of the case was "objectively wavering, whose oscillations are ... the result also of stunning weakness or investigative bouts of amnesia and of blameworthy omissions of investigative activity," the court wrote, according to the Associated Press. The panel blamed the inconsistency in the investigation that led to the delay in proving the defendants' guilt or innocence.

“The international spotlight on the case in fact resulted in the investigation undergoing a sudden acceleration," the judges reportedly wrote in the statement.

Knox and Sollecito spent four years in jail immediately after a 2009 conviction. They, along with a second man, Rudy Guede, were accused of sexually assaulting and murdering 21-year-old Meredith Kercher with a knife. However, in March, Knox and Sollecito were cleared in Kercher’s murder.

The Cassation panel, which comprised of five judges, wrote in the statement that while there were indications Guede could have had accomplices, the prosecutors' case failed to prove that either Knox or Sollecito were involved in the murder.

Knox was "grateful" that the court "forcefully declared my innocence," she wrote in a statement posted on her website Monday.

"This has been a long struggle for me, my family, my friends, and my supporters. While I am glad it is now over, I will remain forever grateful to the many individuals who gave their time and talents to help me," she wrote.

"Today would not have been possible without your unwavering support. I will now begin the rest of my life with one of my goals being to help others who have been wrongfully accused."