Relieved and glad it is finally (knock on wood) over - Amanda Knox Freed After Appeal in Italian Court

From The New York Times:

Monday’s verdict is unlikely to quash the hard feelings the case stirred up regarding the role of the media, both local and international, which have been accused of excessive — and often biased — coverage of the case.

The Italian justice system has also come under close scrutiny, and in the next few days there is likely to be discussion of the pitfalls of a legal system that seems to have wrongly kept two young people in prison for four years.

Many American news media outlets, which were largely sympathetic to the Knox family in their coverage, frequently portrayed the American as having been caught up in what was sometimes described as a medieval or barbaric legal system.

Italian legal experts dismissed such accusations. The Knox case, if anything, exemplified the guarantees implicit in the judicial system, “because the appeals process evaluates both procedural questions and can reopen the investigative phase, which is what happened here,” said Maurizio Bellacosa, a defense lawyer and professor of penal law at the Luiss University in Rome. “It is a guarantee for defendants.”

Giuliano Mignini, the prosecutor who led the murder investigation, said Monday that he would appeal the sentence to Italy’s Supreme Court. The judge will have 90 days to write a report on the court’s conclusions, and parties then have 45 days to file an appeal. The court usually takes a year to hear a case.

Should they decide to overturn the acquittal, Ms. Knox would be tried — even in absentia — in a second appeals court, and if that court upheld the conviction it would return to the Supreme Court.

Only when a final conviction was reached could Italy start extradition procedures against her.