Francesco Maresca, in his closing arguments in the third trial of Knox and co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito, urged the panel of two professional judges and eight lay jurors to disregard Knox's claims of innocence and her criticism of Italy's judicial system as "failed, or fallible."
"She has become a well-known person. You know she signed contracts for millions of dollars for her book. She has someone who takes care of her public relations. She has a personal website where she invites people to collect donations in the memory of the victim, Meredith Kercher, which is an unbearable contradiction for the family," Maresca said.
Knox is soliciting donations on her website for her defence as well as a separate, as yet-unspecified project in Kercher's memory.
Maresca also urged the court to disregard Sollecito's statement to the court last month professing his innocence, noting that he had "just returned from a vacation in Santo Domingo, where he is again in these days, as we are here hearing such an important trial against him."
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Kercher, 21, was brutally murdered in November 2007 in the apartment she shared with Knox in the picturesque university town of Perugia. She had been raped and her throat slashed, her body left beneath a blanket in her bedroom. Prosecutors claim Knox and Sollecito carried out the murder with a third man, Ivory Coast-born Rudy Guede, who is serving a 16-year sentence.
The high court's scathing opinion tore apart the appellate court's decision to free the pair as full of errors and contradictions.
Knox, now 26, spent four years in prison until she was freed in 2011 and returned to the United States, where she remains. Sollecito, 29, has attended several hearings of the current appeal. Defendants in Italy are not required to attend trials.