Amanda Knox Was Aentenced to 26 Years in Italy

Minutes later, the 22-year-old Knox, who is from Seattle, and the 25-year-old Sollecito were put in police vans with sirens blaring and driven back to jail.

Prosecutors had sought life imprisonment, Italy’s stiffest sentence. Courts can give less severe punishment than what prosecutors demand.

The American’s father, Curt Knox, asked if he would fight on for his daughter, replied, with tears in his eyes: “Hell, yes.”

“This is just wrong,” her stepmother, Cassandra Knox, said, turning around immediately after hearing the verdict. Her family had insisted she was innocent and a victim of character assassination.

One of Knox’s attorneys, Luciano Ghirga, was asked if she was distraught. “Yes, I challenge anyone not to be,” he replied.

Kercher family lawyer Francesco Maresca called the verdict and sentence “satisfactory,” but he acknowledged: “There is deep suffering on all sides.”

A group of local youths who gathered outside the courthouse shouted insults and “assassin!” at the Knox family as they walked in to hear the verdict.

Throughout the trial, prosecutors depicted Knox as a promiscuous and manipulative she-devil whose personality clashed with her roommate’s. They say Knox had grown to hate Kercher.

The most intimate details of Knox’s life were examined, from her lax hygiene — allegedly a point of contention with Kercher — to her sex life, even including a sex toy.

Kercher’s body was found in a pool of blood with her throat slit on Nov. 2, 2007, in the bedroom of the house she shared with Knox while the two were studying in the medieval town of PERUGIA in Italy’s central Umbria region. Prosecutors said the Leeds University student was murdered the previous night.

In Seattle, relatives and friends clasped hands as they watched the verdict on TV. “Oh God, no,” her uncle, Mick Huff, cried when it was announced.