Let freedom ring.
Nearly four years after Amanda Knox was arrested on suspicion of having killed her roommate, the 24-year-old Washington native is free. On Monday, following the young woman's emotional appeal, an Italian court overturned the murder convictions of Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito in the killing of Meredith Kercher in 2007.
Earlier in the day, Knox tearfully told the jury she did not kill her former roommate, who was 21 years old when she was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death in the cottage she and Knox rented. "I'm not a promiscuous vamp. I'm not violent… I have not killed, I have not raped," she told the courtroom in Perugia, as excerpted by MSNBC. "I was not there. I was not present."
"I want to go home. I want to go back to my life," she pleaded. "I do not want to be punished and to have my life taken away from me for something I have not done, because I am innocent."
In 2009, Knox and Sollecito were found guilty of murder and sentenced to 26 and 25 years in jail respectively. After Monday's decision was read, both were escorted by Italian guards out of the courtroom.
Knox and Sollecito are expected to return to prison to collect her belongings. Knox is expected to then return home with her family to the United States.
