Milestones

SENTENCED

In a case that engrossed observers on both sides of the Atlantic, American student Amanda Knox, 22, and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 25, were convicted on Dec. 4 of murdering Meredith Kercher--Knox's British roommate--in Perugia, Italy, on Nov. 1, 2007. Knox was ordered to serve 26 years in prison; Sollecito received 25. The prosecution contended that Knox persuaded Sollecito and Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast native who was convicted of the murder in a separate trial, into attempting to sexually assault Kercher before Knox stabbed her in the neck with a kitchen knife. In some ways, the verdict was a shock: while physical evidence tied Guede to the crime, only a bit of biological matter on a knife found at Sollecito's home and a speck of Sollecito's DNA on a bra clasp found six weeks after the crime implicated Sollecito and Knox. Though Knox confessed to being present at the scene during a police interrogation, she later retracted her statement, saying it was induced under duress. But Knox's blithe behavior after the murder--she did cartwheels during questioning and made out with her boyfriend rather than displaying grief--may have aroused enough suspicion to seal her fate.