On the morning after the dramatic Florence court verdict which saw US student Amanda Knox sentenced in abstencia to 28 years and six months for the November 2007 murder in Perugia of English student Meredith Kercher, a major legal question mark hung over this controversial case: namely, what about the principle of double jeopardy?
The history of this difficult case has been marked by incomprehension over the contrasting judicial systems and cultures of Italy, the US and the UK. Nothing makes the point more clearly than the concept of double jeopardy - a US constitutional right - which rules that a person cannot be tried twice for the same crime.
The problem is, of course, that double jeopardy does not exist in Italian law. Knox was found guilty yesterday in what was effectively a retrial at the end of a six-year judicial helter-skelter that has seen her found guilty, then acquitted, then have the acquittal thrown out and now again found guilty.
The point about all of this is that, if yesterday's sentence is to be upheld in a future Supreme Court Appeal, most likely in mid-2015, the question of double jeopardy becomes vital. If the conviction becomes definite, would Italian legal authorities, through the Ministry of Justice, apply for her extradition? That is by no means clear since there have been many cases where Italy has not so applied.
More significantly, how would US authorities react to such an extradition request, given that it is based on a retrial? Indeed, in some senses, Knox and her co-accused former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito have been tried not twice, but four times, for the killing of Kercher. It would be very easy to argue that the Florence sentence represents a breach of Knox's US constitutional rights.
That argument is for further down the road, however. In the meantime, the Knox defence team awaits the “motivazioni”, the judges’ reasoning, for yesterday’s verdict, before it formulates its appeal. The Knox defence team told The Irish Times this morning they do not believe there is any new “big evidence” that could justify the Florence verdict, adding that they first need to assess the motivazioni, due in 90 days or so.
In the meantime, many Italian media organisations have carried the statement issued yesterday on behalf of Knox in which she says she is “frightened and saddened by this unjust verdict”.
Saying that she “expected better” from the Italian justice system, she adds: “My family and I have suffered greatly from this wrongful persecution. This has gotten out of hand. Most troubling is that it was entirely preventable.
“I beseech those with the knowledge and authority to address and remediate the problems that worked to pervert the course of justice and waste the valuable resources of the system: overzealous and intransigent prosecution, prejudiced and narrow-minded investigation, unwillingness to admit mistakes, reliance on unreliable testimony and evidence, character assassination, inconsistent and unfounded accusatory theory, and counterproductive and coercive interrogation techniques that produce false confessions and inaccurate statements.”
In the meantime, Sollecito, who received a 25-year sentence yesterday, this morning handed in his passport at a police station near Udine in northeastern Italy, as established by the court verdict. The fact he had travelled north from Florence to Udine, close to the Italo/Slovene border, had led to speculation he might have been thinking of making a hurried departure from Italy.
However, in reality, Sollecito had gone to the home of his girlfriend, who lives near Udine.