8:34PM BST 02 Oct 2011
Knox will read out the declaration in court in Perugia this morning, shortly before six jurors retire to deliberate on whether to quash or uphold her 26-year sentence for killing Miss Kercher, a Leeds University student, in what prosecutors said was a frenzied attack during a group sex game.
Knox, who attended Mass in the prison chapel yesterday, has been described by those around her as "hopeful". Her co-accused, Raffaele Sollecito, is also appealing against his 25-year sentence for murder and sexual assault and is awaiting his fate.
Knox and Sollecito were found guilty of murdering Miss Kercher, 21, from Coulsdon in Surrey, at the end of a year-long trial in Dec 2009. The exchange student was found dead, with her throat cut, in the house she shared with Knox in the university town of Perugia on November 2, 2007.
Now Knox is appealing her convictions. If she is acquitted, she is set to get on the first plane back to the US. However the jury could uphold her sentence or even increase it to life. The six jurors five women and one man and two judges will have to choose between the two wildly differing images that have been presented of the young American.
Was she, as prosecutors claim, a promiscuous vamp - a "she-devil as one prosecutor claimed whose jealousy of Miss Kercher turned into a sadistic, murderous rage? They say her DNA was on the murder weapon, she had no alibi, witnesses had placed her at the scene, and she herself had confessed to being in the house on the night of the murder.
Or was she, as the defence contends, a naive, innocent abroad who became unwittingly entangled in a miscarriage of justice exacerbated by trans-Atlantic cultural misunderstandings? Legal experts have said the conviction would never have been passed in a British or American court.
During the appeal, much of the evidence was undermined: independent experts claimed the DNA evidence was tainted and insufficient, witnesses proved unreliable, and Knox's confession was presented as having been given under duress. Knox's family and friends say the image portrayed by prosecutors bears no resemblance to reality. They describe her as an intelligent, studious girl who became an A-grade undergraduate at the University of Washington.
Her alleged accomplices were Sollecito, a bespectacled computer studies graduate who had only been her boyfriend for a few days, and Rudy Guede, a drifter who was born in the Ivory Coast but grew up in Italy.
After being found guilty of sexual assault and murder in a separate trial, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison, which on appeal was reduced to 16.
In the four years since the crime in the walled university town of Perugia, the story of "Foxy Knoxy" has been broadcast around the world, though her parents have insisted over and over that she earned the nickname for her skills on the football pitch as a teenager.
Knox listed her interests on her MySpace page two weeks before the murder interests that included "good wine", "drinking tea", "yoga on a rainy day", "rollercoasters" and "Harry Potter". But the wholesome image began to unravel within hours of Miss Kercher being found dead. As police and forensics experts descended on the hillside cottage, Knox and Sollecito hugged and kissed outside, throwing furtive glances at TV cameras and newspaper photographers. A few days later, Knox performed cartwheels and did the splits in a police station in Perugia while waiting to be questioned.
Her behaviour seemed odd to officers, and to the traumatised British friends of Miss Kercher, who were also in the police station. She kissed and cuddled Sollecito, joking and sticking her tongue out at him. Later they went shopping for sexy underwear in a lingerie shop in Perugia. "She liked to be the centre of attention," said Natalie Hayward, who became friends with Miss Kercher in Perugia. "Amanda has a power that is hard to explain."
After Knox was arrested on suspicion of murder, it was discovered that she had posted on her MySpace page a short story that she had written about a young woman being drugged and raped. Her family said it was simply an example of her passion for creative writing.
During one hearing she walked into court wearing a white T-shirt emblazoned with the words "All You Need Is Love" in large pink letters. It seemed deliberately provocative, and was splashed all over the papers.
There is massive expectation in the Knox camp, and in the US in general, that she will be acquitted on all charges and set free to board the first plane home to Seattle. Lucrative interview, book and film deals are expected a prospect which causes much disquiet in Italy.
If Knox and Sollecito are acquitted, prosecutors say they will appeal against the decision in the Court of Cassation in Rome, Italy's highest criminal court and the very final level of appeal. Jurors could strike down the murder convictions and rule that the couple were guilty of a lesser crime such as complicity, which would reduce their sentences and see them released soon, after the four years already served.
Whatever the outcome, the real-life soap opera that has surrounded Amanda Knox for the last four years is likely to keep rolling on, to the profound dismay of Meredith Kercher's grieving family, who fear that amid the circus, the world has lost sight of the one person who never should have been forgotten: Meredith.
