Italy's top court threw out a conviction of American woman Amanda Knox for the 2007 murder of her British flatmate because of "glaring errors" in the case against her, a document showed on Monday.
The brutal stabbing of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher prompted a zigzag of contradictory rulings which ended in March with the acquittal of Knox and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito , casting an uncomfortable spotlight on Italy's legal system.
The third person accused of the murder, Ivory Coast-born Rudy Guede , who is serving a 16-year sentence after opting for a fast-track trial, left "copious" biological traces at the scene, the court said.
The court said avid media attention paid to the killing and the nationalities of the people involved led "a spasmodic search for one or more guilty parties to offer up to international public opinion" which "certainly did not aid the search for the truth".