Amanda Knox verdict close – but still it won’t be over

The marathon trial of Amanda Knox and her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher is very nearly at an end, with two judges and six jurors expected to deliver their verdict either later today or on Saturday. But, whatever the result, there is little chance of this long-running saga being over.

If the young American and her Italian friend are found guilty, they will begin a process of appeals, likely to start in the spring. Each can appeal the verdict twice until the Court of Cassation, Italy's highest appeals court, has the final say.

If they are found not guilty, then prosecutors are likely to appeal against the verdict, forcing a second trial.

Most legal observers outside Italy believe Knox and Sollecito should be acquitted based on the testimony to the Perugia court - especially because of the lack of hard evidence putting them at the scene of the crime.

Much of the prosecution case has been based on speculation, with prosecutor Giuliano Mignini using his summing-up to ask the jurors to imagine what Knox might have said to Kercher before forcing her into a an orgy which ended - according to the prosecution theory - in the Kercher's death.

"You are always behaving like a little saint," Mignini suggested Knox might have said. "Now we will show you. Now we will make you have sex."

As Timothy Egan, writing in the New York Times, put it this week, "Nobody alleges that Knox said this to Kercher. But prosecutors asked the jury to imagine her saying such a thing.

"What century is this? Didn't Joan of Arc, the Inquisition and our own American Salem witch trials teach civilised nations a thing or two about contrived sexual hysteria with a devil twist?"

Yesterday, Knox and Sollecito made last-ditch pleas to the jury not to jail them. Speaking in good Italian - one of the few advantages of spending the past two years in jail in Perugia - 22-year-old Knox said she feared "having the mask of a killer forced onto my skin," adding she "was confident my conscience is clean".

Sollecito, who like Knox claims they were at his apartment on the time Kercher was killed, having sex and watching a movie, added: "I didn't kill Meredith and I was not in that house. Every day that goes by, I hope the real perpetrator confesses."