Contradictions and illogical conclusions in the ruling that freed US student Amanda Knox from jail mean DNA evidence will be re-examined from scratch and witnesses may be re-heard, her lawyer says. <\/p>\n
'We were very surprised, we took it very badly,' Luciano Ghirga said in reference to a damning report released by Italy's highest appeals court explaining why it quashed the acquittal of Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito. <\/p>\n
'The new court will re-examine all the evidence from the very start, with fresh expert evaluation and possibly fresh testimony from witnesses,' he said. <\/p>\n
'We are ready to fight, to answer every challenge point by point,' he added. <\/p>\n
Knox and Sollecito - originally sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison for sexually abusing and killing Knox's British housemate Meredith Kercher - were acquitted by an appeals court in Perugia in 2011 after four years behind bars. <\/p>\n
In March, however, Italy's highest appeals court overturned the acquittal and ordered a retrial in a Florence appeals court, citing 'numerous examples of shortcomings, contradictions and incoherencies' in the original appeal ruling. <\/p>\n
The 74-page report accused the judges of glazing over clues and insisted the prosecution's claim from the original trial - that the grizzly murder was the result of 'an erotic game that spun out of control' - was a valid hypothesis. <\/p>\n
'We had gone beyond that theory, proved there was nothing to it,' Ghirga said, while Sollecito's lawyer Giulia Bongiorno added: 'If there was an erotic game, most certainly Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox were not part of it.' <\/p>\n
Both Knox and Sollecito face a retrial in a Florence court, although no date has yet been set and Italy cannot compel the Seattle-born student to return. <\/p>\n
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\nExperts to re-examine Knox DNA clues<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"