Italian court acquits murder accused

A jury acquitted Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, of the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, earlier on Monday. Defense lawyers for Knox said justice had been served.Knox and her family are staying the night at an undisclosed location near Rome, before departing to the US sometime on Tuesday.Many Perugians, who have followed the case closely over the years, were stunned by the courts decision to overturn the murder verdict.Kerchers half-naked body, with more than 40 wounds and a deep gash in the throat, was found in 2007 in the apartment she shared with Knox in the Umbrian hill town of Perugia where both were studying.Both Knox and Sollecito, 27, consistently maintained their innocence throughout the original investigation and trial.A third man, Ivorian drug dealer Rudy Guede, was imprisoned for 16 years for his role in the murder.The appeal trial gripped attention on both sides of the Atlantic, with an outpouring of sympathy and outrage from many in the United States who saw the American as an innocent girl trapped abroad in the clutches of a medieval justice system.Kercher, a Leeds University student from Coulsdon in Surrey, was on a year-long exchange programme in Perugia when she was murdered, bringing a flood of unwelcome attention to the medieval town in central Italy that her family said she loved.