The other day I was talking to an old friend. She asked me why I first took an interest in the Meredith Kercher case and why I am still involved, over seven years later. I call it the Meredith Kercher case because that is the name of the young woman whose life was tragically snuffed out in Perugia, Italy on the evening of November 1st 2007. It is better known to the wider world as the Amanda Knox case because Amanda was falsely accused of murdering Meredith and it was alleged that she was assisted by her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito.
After four years in prison, including a guilty verdict in 2009, Amanda and Raffaele were exonerated on appeal in 2011. The appeal court was presided over by Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellmann who went out of his way to say that this was no mere acquittal on a technicality. Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were innocent because the evidence proved that they could not be guilty.
And that, we all thought, was that.
We were wrong.
We had not accounted for the Italian justice system.