Verdict soon in Meredith Kercher murder case

The state prosecutor in the long drawn-out Meredith Kercher murder trial in Perugia has called for the 22-year-old American Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito to be given life sentences, which in Italy means at least 30 years in jail.

With a verdict expected early next month, Giuliano Mignini, summing up for the prosecution on Saturday, called Knox "narcissistic, aggressive, manipulative, transgressive, with a tendency to dominate".

He said she had killed Kercher when her British flatmate refused to take part in a violent sex game, stabbing her in the throat. The young American deserved the harshest penalty, said Mignini, who even called for her to spend the first nine months of her sentence in solitary confinement during daylight hours.

Mignini took seven hours to sum up, hoping to convince the jury that Knox, Sollecito and Rudy Guede, an Ivorian who has already been sent to jail, were all involved in sexually assaulting and killing Kercher.

Despite objections from the defence team, Mignini was allowed to show an animated reconstruction of what he imagined happened on the night of November 2, 2007. This film, which juxtaposed photos of Kercher’s fatal stab wounds with cartoon scenes involving characters that appeared to have come out of Second Life, ended dramatically with the screen turning red.
 
THE PROSECUTION CASE
Mignini told the court that Knox was "easily given to disliking people she disagreed with" and had developed a forceful resentment against her British housemate. "Amanda had the chance to retaliate against a girl who was serious and quiet," he said. "She had harboured hatred for Meredith.. the time had come to take revenge on that smug girl."

He imagined that the pair had rowed on the night of the murder. Kercher, he said, "showed her disapproval over the umpteenth man brought home by Knox, particularly at that hour. Maybe she also challenged Knox about missing money."

Then, Mignini proposed, Knox and Sollecito probably attacked Kercher, with him grabbing her by the hair and Knox pushing her against a bedroom cupboard. After Guede joined them, eager to have sex with Kercher, Mignini believes that Knox and Sollecito both began to stab her.

It was Knox, he argued, who delivered the fatal stab wound. The prosecution points to evidence of Sollecito's DNA on the clasp of Kercher's bra, and Knox's DNA on the hilt of a knife found at Sollecito's house.

THE DEFENCE CASE
Knox denies the accusations, and maintains that neither she nor Sollecito had anything to do with the murder. They say they spend the night of the murder at Sollecito's house in Perugia where they had sex, smoked cannabis and watched a movie.

After hearing Mignini’s account in court, Knox was almost crying. "Meredith was my friend and I did not hate her," she said. "To hurt someone who was kind to me is absurd. And I had no relationship with Rudy, I did not frequent him. What has been said is pure fantasy. It is not the truth, it is not the reality."

After hearing Mignini's summing-up, Knox's stepfather, Chris Mellas said: "It is a huge jump to go from cohabitation issues to an enormous hatred, especially since Amanda had never ever had these issues."

Defence lawyers have argued that some of the DNA evidence used in this case has been contaminated, that there was not enough of Kercher's DNA on the bra to be certain, and that the knife which was allegedly used in the murder was too big to cause the stab wounds. ·