month.

Her family said that Knox has had trouble sleeping as the appeal date approached. She was apprehensive, but hopeful, they said.

Amanda Knox's Legal Team Challenges Forensic Evidence Against Her

Key to Knox's appeal is her legal team's request that the prosecution's forensic evidence be reviewed independently. They are challenging whether Kercher's DNA was found a knife from Sollecito's kitchen, and whether police properly collected evidence, particularly a bra clasp which contained Sollecito's DNA.

The defense will also attack the prosecution's shifting version of a motive for the killing which ranged from a sex game gone wrong to a personal feud over Knox's boyfriends and hygiene.

In the appeal, Knox's lawyers said "the motive, a fundamental aspect of a serious crime, is basically absent."

Her defense team was also encouraged by a writtenconclusion of the case by Judge Giancarlo Massei appears to contradict the prosecution's argument that Kercher's murder was the result of Knox's explosive rage at her "prissy" roommate who complained about Knox's hygiene and for bringing male friends to their Perugia apartment late at night.

Prosecutors claimed during the trial the assault was initiated by Knox, but the judge wrote that Kercher's death had an "erotic, sexual, violent" motive that was initiated by Guede "giving in to his lust." When Kercher turned him down, Knox and Sollecito joined in the effort to overpower Kercher because it "could have seemed particularly exciting," the report states.

According to the report by Massei and his assistant judge, the murder was not planned or premeditated and not the result of resentment of the part