Prosecutors demand life in jail for Amanda Knox (Reuters)

PERUGIA, Italy (Reuters) – Italian prosecutors asked a court on Saturday to put American student Amanda Knox behind bars for life for murdering her British housemate in a frenzied sex game that turned violent.

Knox, a 24-year-old from Seattle, is already serving a 26-year jail term after being found guilty in 2009 of the brutal killing of Meredith Kercher with the help of her former Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.

Wrapping up their case at Knox’s appeal hearing for her conviction to be upheld, prosecutors also asked the court to sentence her to six months of daytime solitary confinement.

They asked for Sollecito’s 25-year jail term to be increased to life plus two months of solitary confinement.

Knox — her hair in a pony-tail, and flanked by her lawyers and a prison official — sat motionless and displayed no emotion as prosecutors read out the request for a life term. An equally impassive Sollecito sat a few places away.

Knox’s father said his daughter had been prepared to hear prosecutors demand that she be locked away for life.

“It’s never easy when ’re on trial for r life, essentially, but yesterday was just pure character assassination and today was more technical,” said Curt Knox. “So she’s holding up, and she’s strong and she’ll be ready.”

Kercher’s half-naked body was found in 2007, with a deep stab wound in the throat, in the apartment she shared with Knox in Perugia, a university town in the Umbrian hills. Prosecutors say Knox — dubbed “Foxy Knoxy” in the press — handled the knife that killed the English student.

Knox has won support from many in the United States, where her family has helped keep attention on her case by appearing regularly on talk shows. Others have portrayed her as a pot-smoking party girl who did not think twice about cuddling with her boyfriend outside the house where Kercher’s body was found.

On the second day of the prosecution’s closing arguments, prosecutor Manuela Comodi launched a vigorous defense of DNA evidence used to convict Knox, holding up a white bra in court at one stage to make her point.

Much of the trial has focused on a review this year by forensic experts. This shed doubt on DNA evidence found on Kercher’s bra clasp and on a knife identified as the murder weapon, boosting the American’s hopes of being freed.

But as the trial neared its end, prosecutors argued that there was more than enough damning evidence against Knox, and accused an “obsessive” media of portraying her as the victim of a botched justice system in a country far from home.

A CHEF WHO CAN’T COOK

Comodi focused her attack on Saturday on the credibility of the experts behind the review, saying their performance was “embarrassing” and “disturbing.” She said they were unwilling to embrace new technologies and had little field experience.

“Would entrust the marriage of r only daughter to a cook who knew all the recipes by heart but has never cooked?” Comodi asked the panel of lay and professional judges.

She then tried meticulously to tear the report apart, including its conclusion that traces of Sollecito’s DNA found on Kercher’s bra clasp could have been due to contamination.

If contamination had occurred, DNA belonging to others would also have been found on the clasp, Comodi argued.

A claim that Sollecito’s DNA could have made its way onto the clasp because it was on Knox’s underwear that was washed together with Kercher’s bra seemed highly improbable, given that the laundry was washed at a high temperature, she argued.

Pulling out a white bra from her bag, Comodi said Sollecito’s DNA had ended up on the clasp when he pulled one end of Kercher’s bra strap and cut off the bra with his other hand.

She also attacked the review’s contention that traces of starch found on the knife identified as the murder weapon suggested it had not been washed, which in turn meant that it could not have been used to murder Kercher.

Comodi argued that the knife was “spotlessly clean” and that the traces of starch stemmed not from cutting potatoes or bread but from talc in gloves used by police.

The court is expected to hear on Monday from lawyers for Kercher’s family and Patrick Lumumba, a Congolese bar owner whom Knox had accused of committing the murder.

A verdict in the appeal is expected after concluding arguments from the defense at the end of next week, nearly four years after the murder stunned Italy and transfixed audiences in Britain and the United States.

Rudy Guede, an Ivorian drifter with a criminal record, is also serving time for taking part in Kercher’s murder.

All three convicted parties maintain their innocence.

(Editing by Robert Woodward)

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