Amanda Knox Guilty, 'Not Going Back to Italy Willingly'

By Sami K. Martin, Christian Post Reporter Friday, January 31, 2014

Amanda Knox was found guilty yet again by an Italian court for the death of roommate Meredith Kercher. The former student has been sentenced to 28 years and six months in prison, but Knox has repeatedly said that she will run and hide from authorities and not go back to prison.

Amanda Knox pauses emotionally while speaking during a news conference at Sea-Tac International Airport, Washington after landing there on a flight from Italy, October 4, 2011. Amanda Knox returned home to Seattle one day after an Italian court cleared the 24-year-old college student of murder and freed her from prison. | (Photo: Reuters/Anthony Bolante)

"I'm definitely not going back to Italy willingly," Knox told the Guardian. "They'll have to catch me and pull me back kicking and screaming into a prison that I don't deserve to be in. I will fight for my innocence," she said before the verdict was announced.

"I am frightened and saddened by this unjust verdict," Knox told ABC News after the verdict was handed down.

"I couldn't believe what I was hearing. This really has hit me like a train. I really expected so much better from the Italian justice system. They found me innocent before, how can they find me guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?" Knox asked on "Good Morning America."

It's been a long, grueling ordeal for Knox, who has been put on trial three times for Kercher's death. Knox's family is standing beside her and offering their support in any way possible because they believe that she is truly innocent and want to clear her name.

"If you look at common sense, you look at evidence, you look at the fact that Amanda is nowhere in that room, then no, I wasn't expecting this," Curt Knox, Amanda's father, told ABC. "They got it right in the first appeals trial where they found her innocent and allowed us to bring her home and this is totally wrong."

"Amanda's upset, we were all shocked and upset, but we're all ready to fight, too," her mother, Edda Mellas added. "Everyone in the family, everyone in the extended family are all ready to continue to fight for truth and fight for her freedom and it's not going to stop."

Knox could be extradited back to Italy, where she would have no choice but to serve her sentence. Lawyers have argued that she should be allowed to serve her time here in the United States, but other attorneys have stated that it would be unfair to allow her to do so, given how often the US extradites criminals back into the country.