Your faith in the justice system is touching, nick.
As I understand it, her initial conviction was overturned on appeal. So one could as easily say that, upon review, she was acquitted. ACQUITTED. Without being personally acquainted with the case, none of us know for sure what her involvement was.
Had to do a search on why she was aquitted. Found the following:
“Forensics may have played a bigger role than rhetoric in the court’s verdict. Much of the appeal revolved around whether the DNA on two key pieces of evidence were credible.
Two court appointed experts looked at the prosecution’s evidence and delivered a damning assessment that the manner in which the DNA was collected, stored and analyzed was below international standards.
One involved the alleged murder weapon, a knife found in Sollecito’s kitchen. Prosecutors claimed the handled contained Knox’s DNA and a speck on the blade contained Kercher’s DNA. But the experts said the speck was too small to make a second test to confirm the analysis and the experts concluded that DNA came from bread.
The second piece of evidence was allegedly Sollecito’s DNA on the bra clasp cut from Kercher’s bra during the attack. The experts said it was improperly handled and likely had been contaminated.”
BTW - the bra clasp had been picked up by the police at least once, and then dropped back on the ground during the investigation! It was found during another sweep of the apartment 30+ days later. I imagine that would have been plenty of time to mix with dead skin, etc. that roam our floors.
I thought that the goofy ideas of the prosecutor were also part of the acquittal, but perhaps not. He had a pet theme of Satanic Sex Rituals that he had tried on previous cases, as well as this case (but no evidence). He was convicted of missuse of power for illegal investigations, but he is STILL a prosecuter! He was being investigated on these charges while he was prosecuting the Knox case.
Don't know how it works in Italia, but in America when a conviction is overturned on appeal, it doesn't mean the accused is acquitted.
It simply puts the case back to square one, and the prosecution has to decide whether to file new charges.
There may be exceptions to this general rule.
You don’t understand the Italian justice system. If a person is convicted, they get two free appeals. Until after those appeals, they don’t even consider the conviction final. It’s not our system, but is actually more pro-defendant than our system.