Amanda Knox Pleads With Judge to Block Lifetime Movie From TV and Internet

ROME March 24, 2011— -- Amanda Knox pleaded with an Italian judge today to block the showing of a Lifetime movie about her murder conviction and force it to be yanked from the internet saying she was "very disturbed" by the movie and that it could hurt her legal appeal.

"I am distressed by this invasion into my life and the way my life is being exploited," Knox told Judge Teresa Giardino, her lawyers told reporters outside the judge's office. The hearing was closed to the public.

"I consider it the culmination of repeated violations by the media of my person, my personality, and my story," her lawyers said Knox told the judge. "These are all things that don't correspond to the truth."

Knox wants the judge to block the U.S. Lifetime channel movie "Amanda Knox: Murder in Italy" from being shown in Italy, where she is appealing her conviction to 26 years in prison for the 2007 murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher.

She also wants it pulled from the internet and that for any distribution of images from the film to be blocked. They are bringing their case against YouTube and Google as well as Lifetime Entertainment. YouTube has since removed any reference to the movie and its trailer from its website.

For Knox, today's court appearance was a brief break from her prison cell. She crossed the square from the prison van to the civil court in Piazza Matteotti in Perugia escorted by two guards, her head down. She was wearing a white shirt and black jacket over pants, her demeanor tense, as it has been since the appeal of her murder conviction began last November. Her hair, which is growing out from last summer's bob, was pulled back in a little pony tail.

Knox's stepfather Chris Mellas and her good friend Madison Paxton watched as Knox entered the courthouse and waited outside the office while she and her lawyers conferred with the judge, but they were not allowed to speak to her.

The hearing was quickly adjourned because representatives for the Lifetime channel, who have not yet confirmed receipt of their summons, were not present. But Knox did get a chance to make a personal appeal to the judge, and her lawyers presented their requests.

Knox's lawyers Carlo Dalla Vedova, Luciano Ghirga and Maria del Grosso maintain that the Lifetime movie, which aired in February in the United States, causes "very serious and irreparable damage" to their client, reported Italian news agency ANSA.

Amanda Knox's Wants Lifetime Movie Yanked From Internet

Dalla Vedova told the Italian news agency ANSA that the film had had 687,000 hits on Google "and now there is even a website that is showing it with Italian websites."

The hearing had to be adjourned without a decision, and the next one is not scheduled until July 4. In the meantime Italian news channels showed parts of the trailer again today as part of their news reports.

Knox will be back in criminal court in Perugia on March 26 for the next hearing in her murder appeal when a key prosecution witness will be cross-questioned. Antonio Curatolo, a homeless man, testified in her murder trial that he saw Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, who was convicted of murder with Knox, outside the cottage where Kercher was killed on the night of her murder. He said he knew he had seen them on the night of Nov. 1, 2007 because there were buses loading students to take them to the discos outside of town that night.

Witnesses called by the defense at the last hearing testified, however, that discos were not open that night in Perugia, and there were no buses running. The big business had been the night before, on Halloween, they said.

Other news that could be considered positive for Knox and Sollecito emerged this week from the Rome forensic laboratory where DNA experts appointed by the Perugia Appeals court are testing two key pieces of evidence.

The experts tested the blade of a knife on which police experts said they had found a small amount of Kercher's DNA, but did not find any useful genetic material on it. Prosecutors had claimed the knife was the murder weapon.

The experts also intended to test the victim's bra hook on which police had found Sollecito's DNA mixed with Kercher's DNA, but the hook was too ruined to be able to be tested again

Amanda Knox Presses Appeal of Murder Conviction

This means that the court experts will have to evaluate this DNA evidence by reviewing the results of the tests provided by the prosecution.

Knox and Sollecito's defenses claim the DNA results were invalid because Kercher's DNA on the knife was too small an amount to be reliable and Sollecito's DNA on the bra hook was the result of contamination, they say.

The court experts will turn the full results of their examination in to the court on May 9.