American Found Guilty in Italy Killing Vows to Fight Extradition

Appearing stunned and fighting back tears, Amanda Knox said Friday that she 'will never go willingly back' to Italy and would fight any effort to extradite her 'to the very end.'

'It's not right, and it's not fair,' Ms. Knox said in the interview with ABC's 'Good Morning America,' the day after an Italian appeals court upheld her 2009 conviction for the murder two years earlier of Meredith Kercher, with whom she had been sharing a student apartment in Perugia.

The court sentenced her in absentia to 28 ½ years in prison.

This latest decision is likely to set off years more of court battles in Italy and possibly the United States, legal experts said, before Ms. Knox could in theory be arrested and sent to Italy for punishment.

Ms. Knox, now 26, and her former boyfriend, Raffael Sollecito, 29, spent four years in prison for the murder before an appellate court acquitted them in 2011. Italy's highest court, the Court of Cassation, overturned that acquittal, sending the case back to the appellate court in Florence that affirmed both their convictions on Thursday. Mr. Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito have firmly declared their innocence. Their convictions, turning in part on DNA evidence of disputed reliability, have been called justice by some and a travesty by others.

The case appears likely to drag on in Italian courts for months, legal experts say. The Florence court has 90 days to explain its reasoning, and the defendants can appeal. Then the case will go again to the highest court, which may not consider it for many months at least.

If, after those rounds, Ms. Knox is definitively pronounced guilty, the Italian government would have to decide whether to seek extradition and if it does, then the United States government would almost certainly start proceedings, according to Martin J. Auerbach, a former federal prosecutor and white-collar defense lawyer in New York who has been involved in extradition cases.

Barring a highly unusual political decision by the president to interfere, he said, Ms. Knox would be arrested and then have a chance to appeal in Federal District Court.

'But now that she has been convicted twice, it will be very difficult to prevail and avoid being sent back to Italy,' he said. While the American and Italian judicial systems are different, he said, 'it's hard to see anything in this case that would so offend the judicial conscience of the United States that we don't respect Italy's process.'

A more realistic outcome for Ms. Knox if it comes to that point, he said, would be to work out a deal in which she is allowed to serve time in an American prison.

Still, her appeals could be varied and prolonged, said Sean Casey, a former federal prosecutor and a specialist in extradition law with the New York firm of Kobre & Kim.

'From a practical point of view, the best thing Ms. Knox has going for her is that she's present in the United States and she has substantial protections here to fight and delay an extradition,' he said.

Under the bilateral treaty, the Italians are required to provide American officials with information that gives 'a reasonable basis' to believe that Ms. Knox committed the crime.

'I believe that is one area Ms. Knox's legal team could use to attack an extradition request,' Mr. Casey said.

After her interview on Friday, in New York, Ms. Knox plans to fly home this weekend, said David Marriott, a family spokesman in Seattle.

Since returning from Italy, Ms. Knox has attended the University of Washington and expects to graduate in June with a degree in creative writing, Mr. Marriott said. But at the moment, he added, 'she's emotional, this is a very difficult time for her.'