Knox stunned by guilty verdict, vows to fight conviction

An emotional Amanda Knox said today she had been left reeling after an Italian court again found her guilty for murder, and vowed she would never return willingly to serve her sentence.
Knox, 26, was sentenced in absentia to 28 years and six months in prison for the 2007 murder of British student Meredith Kercher in the latest dramatic twist in the long-running legal saga.
Both Knox and her former lover Raffaele Sollecito, who was sentenced to 25 years, have fiercely maintained their innocence and vowed to appeal.
Fighting back tears, Knox told ABC television today the court's guilty verdict "hit me like a train."

"I will never go willingly back... I'm going to fight this to the very end," she said, adding "it's not right and it's not fair."
Knox, 26, spent four years in an Italian prison after being initially convicted of the murder of her roommate Kercher in Perugia, Italy, where they were both studying.

She was freed when an appeals court threw out the conviction in 2011, but Italy's supreme court ordered the case retried and an appeals court found her guilty yesterday.
"I did not expect this to happen. I really expected so much more from the Italian justice system. They found me innocent once before," Knox said in her first television interview since the latest verdict was announced.

Her lawyer Ted Simon, vowed on CNN today that his client would appeal the "unjust" verdict.
"There was no evidence then and there's no evidence now," he said. "That's why it becomes so incomprehensible how could there be a different verdict when there's no new or differing evidence."
Meanwhile in Italy, Sollecito was picked up by police in the town of Venzone near the Austrian border where he was reportedly staying with his girlfriend.
Sollecito, 29, who was designated a flight risk by the court, was asked to surrender his passport after being reportedly found with Greta Menegaldo, whose parents live in South America, Italian media reported.

His lawyer Luca Maori said Sollecito had assured him he "never had any intention of fleeing" and had been visiting his girlfriend because he was upset by the trial, but police were reportedly investigating what he was doing in Venzone, when Menegaldo lives in Treviso -- over 150 kilometres away.
Sollecito had made a brief appearance in court yesterday morning, but was not present for the verdict.