Rafaelle Sollecito, Amanda Knox's former lover, is seeking $545,000 from the Italian government to compensate for the four years he spent in jail after he and Knox were accused of murdering her roommate.
Giulia Bongiorno, Sollecito's lawyer, told NBC News that the amount is the maximum a person can receive in compensation in Italy for wrongful imprisonment.
Knox and Sollecito were originally found guilty in 2009 of killing Meredith Kercher, Knox's roommate in Perugia, where she was studying abroad. But then, over the course of a years-long battle in the Italian justice system, they were acquitted, then convicted again, then acquitted again — for a final time — last year.
Italy's high court that overturned the conviction found "stunning flaws" in the Kercher
murder investigation, according to The Guardian. Ultimately, the judges determined there wasn't enough evidence to charge the pair.
"The trial had oscillations which were the result of stunning flaws, or amnesia, in the investigation and omissions in the investigative activity," The Guardian quoted the judges.
Rudy Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was also convicted of Kercher's murder and is currently serving a 16-year sentence.
After he was ultimately acquitted in March 2015, The Guardian said Sollecito told an Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, "For seven years I have had a suspended life, I have lived with the fear of being arrested but knowing I am innocent."
The Knox-Sollecito case has been followed avidly in the American media and is the subject of numerous online comments. Although the Italian courts have finished with the case, many still consider it unsolved.
A long interview with Guede recently aired, and what he had to say — including a statement that Knox was at the scene right before Kercher was murdered — reignited public
interest in the case, according to True Crimes Podcasts.
"Rudy Guede’s interview with Franca Leosini drew in approximately 1,500,000 viewers. The show was declared a ‘triumph‘ on social media as the audience tweeted thousands of comments during and after the show," the website said.
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