Want to read Italian report on why Amanda Knox was found guilty?

You can
By ANDREA VOGT
SPECIAL TO SEATTLEPI.COM

A determined group of international bloggers who discuss the Amanda Knox case on a message
board run by a Seattle woman has published an English translation of the 397-page sentencing
report handed down by an Italian court last December.

· Read the report (warning: large file size; 2.4MB PDF)

Judge Giancarlo Massei's sentencing document -- until now available only in the original Italian
--recounts the Perugia judge's reasoning behind why he found Knox, her Italian ex-boyfriend
Raffaele Sollecito and African immigrant Rudy Guede, guilty of the murder of Meredith Kercher, a
British exchange student with whom Knox shared an apartment in Perugia, Italy.

The judge's report is the most detailed record available of the witnesses, evidence and court
testimony presented in Italy over the course of the nine-month trial 2009, which ended last
December when Knox was found guilty and sentenced to 26 years in jail.

Her lawyers are appealing the decision in hearings scheduled to begin later this fall.

The translation of the sentencing document is a cyber watermark in a high-profile murder case
that has taken on an unusually large international Internet following.

Since Kercher's slaying in November 2007, interested parties from across the globe have sparred
about the innocence or guilt of the accused on various websites, which have morphed and
multiplied as the years have passed.

Several sites went beyond just the usual online discussion forums and began publishing and
posting troves of digital memos, legal briefs and other documents usually available only to
reporters, lawyers or parties covering the case.

Sites declaring the defendants' innocence and guilt both used the Web to lobby the public and
journalists with original and supporting documents, all with varying degrees of spin and emphasis.

One blogger published a book on the case, others helped raise money to pay for the expenses
incurred by the Knox family members as they traveled back and forth to Italy to attend the trial,
pay their legal fees and support their daughter.

The 12 "unpaid volunteers" who translated the Massei report into English live on four different
continents and include translators, lawyers, a medical doctor and a molecular biologist.
While most prefer the anonymity of their online aliases, many of them have formed friendships
behind the scenes as regular posters on the Perugia Murder File message board, which generally
supports the thesis that Knox is guilty as charged but has long hosted heated exchanges on even
the most minute details of the case.

Other sites argue that Knox is innocent and being railroaded by the Italian police and the
country's judicial system.

The Seattle translator who spearheaded the effort, Peggy Ganong, filed a complaint with with the
Seattle Police Department in March 2009saying she had been harassed online by Knox
supporters for her role in mediating the board.

No charges were ever filed, and the investigation appears to have reached a dead end. Ganong
said she has not pressed police for further action, since the threats stopped soon after her
complaint was made public.

She continued her active role monitoring the case, however.

When the idea was floated online to produce a professional translation of the Italian legal
document, Ganong, herself a translator by trade for more than a decade, jumped in to help
organize the effort.

. . "It was a daunting, complex job but we wanted non-Italian speakers to be able to see for
themselves on what grounds Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of murdering
Meredith Kercher,"

Ganong told seattlepi.com Monday. "We felt too many members of the U.S. media were basing
their reporting on public relations and family sources rather than actual case materials. Hopefully,
the facts that emerge clearly from this report will help to dispel the bias and myths."

According to Ganong, the 12-member team worked on the document for five months before
releasing it publicly Sunday.

"I really don't know of any other murder case where this level of participation and input have
developed," Ganong said. The group not only published the report on its own preferred sites, but
also sent it by e-mail to more than 200 reporters and journalists who had covered this case, but
may not have been able to read the original sentencing report in Italian.

Both the original Italian document and its English translation have now been made available to
seattlepi.com readers.

Judge: Amanda Knox took part in murder but wasn't crime's

mastermind
By ANDREA VOGT
SPECIAL TO SEATTLEPI.COM

PERUGIA, Italy - Amanda Knox was present and took part in the drug-fueled murder of her
British roommate Meredith Kercher, but was not the mastermind, according to an Italian judge's
opinion released Thursday.

"All of the elements put together, and considered singularly, create a comprehensive and
complete framework without holes or incongruities," wrote Judge Giancarlo Massei, who presided
over the 11-month trial of Seattle native Amanda Knox and Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito,
convicted and sentenced to 26 and 25 years respectively last December.

"It leads to the inevitable and directly consequential attribution of the crimes to both the accused,
for which therefore they clearly have penal responsibility . . ."

The opinion, released just one day before the 90-day cut-off deadline required by Italian law, is a
whopping 427 pages, addressing, in excruciating detail, how the hundreds of pieces of evidence
presented in court factored into the jury's guilty verdict.

The document produced by the presiding judges based on the deliberations of the jury. Two
judges take part in the deliberations and verdict.

Italian law requires such an option to be produced after every criminal trial,

Obtained in Perugia by seattlepi.com, the opinion largely supports the prosecution's case,
particularly on the forensics, but also leaves room for different interpretations that will likely
feature prominently in Knox's appeal -- namely the motive and murder dynamic inside the
apartment.

Knox maintained her innocence through her long trial. Her family released a statment from
Seattle on Thursday that they have asked that her appeal begin.

"We know she is innocent as there is no forensic evidence that puts her in Meredith's room, no
evidence of her at the scene of this horrible crime.

"Meredith was Amanda's friend. They liked each other and spent time together when not in
school. Amanda would not hurt Meredith."

But the jury believed otherwise.

According to the opinion released Thurday, jurors believed there was a sex game that began
events, but Knox didn't start it. Ivory Coast-born immigrant Rudy Guede did.

Guede has also been tried and convicted in Kercher's death.

Jurors theorized that Knox, Sollecito and Guede arrived at the apartment together and got high.
They suggested Guede used the bathroom, and when he came out saw Knox and Sollecito being
intimate, became excited and sought out Kercher, who was reading in her room.

When she resisted, Knox and Sollecito came into the room and aided Guede in restraining her so
he could continue. The violence spiraled out of control, and Kercher was eventually killed, with
Knox threatening and eventually stabbing her with the large kitchen knife the jury was convinced
is the murder weapon, jurors decided.

The court said it did not believe the crime was premeditated, but rather a result of violence partly
attributable to the suspects' uninhibited behavior after getting high.

It also noted that it gave Knox and Sollecito a reduced sentence because they were young and
had taken pity on the victim and covered Kercher's body with the duvet.

The court cited as reliable elements of proof not just the alleged murder weapon (a knife with
Knox's DNA on the handle and a trace amount of Kercher's on the blade) and the bra clasp with
Sollecito's DNA, but also the luminol-enhanced footprints attributed to Knox and Sollecito.

The judge paid particular attention to the multiple traces of mixed blood (Kercher's) and DNA
(Knox's) in the apartment's small bathroom, noting that also the door and lightswitch in the
bathroom had been touched with someone with bloody hands or clothes.

Traces of Kercher's blood and Knox's DNA were found together in several spots, the judge wrote,
specifically, the on a cotton swap box, the sink and the bidet.

"Mixed biological traces belonging to Meredith and Amanda in the washbasin and bidet and
seemed to indicate the cleaning of hands of feet," the opinion read, going on to suggest that
Knox's skin tissues had rubbed off as she tried to scrub off Meredith's blood in the bathroom.

However, jurors found two of the prosecution's witnesses as "not credible" and did not agree with
prosecutors' theory of exactly how the murder unfolded.

Jurors discounted as unreliable two eye witnesses -- an Albanian drug-dealer and another
student. Both testified they had seen Knox, Sollecito and Guede together.

Lead prosecutor Giuliano Mignini expressed satisfaction Thursday with the judge's opinion,
despite divergences from the case he had presented in court.

"They confirmed the compatibility of the murder weapon, the fact that there was no
contamination, that it was group violence and that the murder was committed by all three," he
said. "They confirmed the staging and inconsistencies in their statements. It is perfectly in line
except for a few small nuances that have to do with the hypotheses about that night. Everyone is
trying to understand what happened."

Since the guilty verdict in early December, Knox's family and supporters have pressed on with
their public relations campaign to proclaim that she is innocent, holding a comedy night fund-
raiser in Seattle and making a number of high-profile media appearances, most recently on
"Oprah."

The opinion released Thursday is a necessary first step for Knox's eventual filing of an appeal.

Knox's U.S. attorney, Theodore Simon, was not available for comment Thursday.

Her attorney in Perugia, Luciano Ghirga, said he was "dissatisfied with the opinion," but refrained
further comment until Friday, in order to read the document thoroughly.

But Knox's family criticized it.

"In our opinion, there is a lot of conjecture in these motivations, a number of discrepancies as well
as a number of inconsistencies and contradictions; as well as conclusions not supported by
evidence. These will be detailed in the appeal.

"Based on our initial review of the motivations, we feel there is a substantial basis for the appeal
and are confident that the appeal will result in a reversal of this wrongful conviction."