Amanda Knox told the Guardian she feels "stranded" and "trapped" following her reconviction last week for the death of her former roommate and British student Meredith Kercher.
Knox, 26, and her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were arrested for Kercher's murder in 2007. Two years later, they were convicted.
They weren't the only ones, either. Petty criminal Rudy Guede was convicted in a separate case after his DNA was found at the crime scene - including his bloody hand print on a pillow. Guede denied killing Kercher and had his sentence reduced from 30 to 16 years after he implicated Knox and Sollecito.
The four-year ordeal appeared to be over for Knox and Sollecito when, in 2011, a judge acquitted them based on a lack of evidence.
"Even taken all together," the evidence does not "prove in any way the guilt of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for the crime" of Kercher's murder, the judge wrote at the time.
Italy's supreme court ordered a retrial, however, and the two were once again found guilty in a verdict announced Jan. 30. Knox was given a 28-and-a-half-year sentence; Sollecito a 25-year sentence.
"I am frightened and saddened by this unjust verdict," she said in written remarks. "Having been found innocent before, I expected better from the Italian justice system. The evidence and accusatory theory do not justify a verdict of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt...There has always been a marked lack of evidence."
Knox, who received the news from her home in Seattle where she is originally from, has returned to the University of Washington, where she says the school and students have been sympathetic.
"The stance my university has taken is no matter what is going on with me legally I am still a student, and I've been shown support as far as security goes," she told the Guardian. "I haven't had any backlash. If anything people have been quiet and respectful, but it is like I've just been diagnosed with cancer."
Knox and Sollecito plan to appeal the verdict in what will be their last chance to clear their names.
