The highest court in Italy has ordered Amanda Knox to stand trial again for the killing of her former roommate, British exchange student Meredith Kercher, overturning Knox's 2011 acquittal. Knox will likely not return to Italy for the retrial, as her presence is not required, and after the four years she spent in Italian jail during the first trial and its appeal she's probably just as happy to never go back (though think of those wasted language skills!). In 2007, Knox, at the time an exchange student, and Raffaelle Sollecito, her then-boyfriend, were arrested after Kercher was found dead, partially undressed and with her throat slit, in their shared apartment in Perguia. An apparent confession (later thrown out), Knox's bizarre post-arrest behavior, and prosecutors' accusations that Kercher had been killed as part of a satanic sex game became tabloid fixations during the two-year trial, which ended in 2009 with convictions for Knox and Sollecito. After an appeal, the convictions were overturned in 2011—an Ivorian named Rudy Guede had been separately tried and convicted—and Knox returned to Seattle, her hometown. If she and Sollecito are re-convicted of Kercher's murder, Italian law will require her to serve out her life sentence, though it remains to be seen whether or not the U.S. would approve an extradition request. In a statement, Knox called the high court's ruling "painful" and "unfair." [NYT | NBC | CNN]
