By John Phillips
ROME
The Italian Supreme Court has cleared Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, of charges of murdering of British student Meredith Kercher, ending a six-year judicial drama that gripped the world.
The court of cassation upheld the appeal by the American and Italian students Friday, although Knox was convicted of slander and sentenced to a three-year prison term, which she will not serve because of time already spent in jail.
Standing outside her mother's home in Seattle on Friday night, Knox said: "I’m still absorbing the present moment, which is full of joy. I’m grateful to have my life back.
"Meredith was my friend -- she deserved so much in this life.”
Sollecito's sister, Vanessa, said: "Finally it is finished."
'Surprised and shocked'
The court decision was the final stage of a protracted judicial process, which began in 2009 when Knox and Sollecito were found guilty of Kercher’s murder.
Meredith’s mother, Arline Kercher, said she was "surprised and very shocked" by the legal decision.
The lawyer for the Kercher family, Francesco Maresca, said: "I think this is a defeat for the Italian justice system."
Knox and Sollecito had spent almost four years in prison before a second-level appeal court in Perugia acquitted them on grounds of a lack of material evidence to support the guilty verdicts.
'Frightened and saddened'
However, on March 26, 2013, Italy’s highest legal authority declared the appeal null and void and ordered a re-trial, which took place in January 2014, with Knox and Sollecito once again being found guilty.
The former, who had by this point returned to the United States, was sentenced to 28 years in prison and Sollecito ordered to serve 25 years.
At the time, Knox told ABC news she was "frightened and saddened" by the verdict.
"Having been found not guilty in the past, I expected better from the Italian judicial system," she said.
A Leeds University student from Coulsdon, Surrey, in the U.K., Kercher, 21, was found murdered in an apartment she shared with Knox and two other students in the town of Perugia in November 2007.
Knox and Sollecito were arrested days later and convicted of Kercher's killing by a court in Perugia in December 2009, before being cleared two years later, when Knox returned to the U.S.
In 2014, they were again convicted in Florence after the Supreme Court of Cassation court overturned their acquittals and ordered an appeal trial.
False accusation
Rudy Guede, a petty criminal from Ivory Coast, has already been jailed for Kercher's killing.
Perugia bar owner and Knox's former boss Diya "Patrick" Lumumba, who Knox had falsely accused of the murder shortly after the crime, was in court to hear the decision.
Knox's accusations against Lumumba were widely seen to have been a key factor in her initial conviction.
Her conviction for falsely accusing him of the murder -- which carried a three-year sentence -- was upheld.
After Knox's accusation, Lumumba spent two weeks in prison before being cleared.
