Minutes later, Knox, 22, who is from Seattle, and Sollecito, 25, were put in police vans and driven back to jail.
Prosecutors had sought life imprisonment, Italy’s stiffest sentence.
Knox’s family said later in a statement that they would appeal the ruling.
Kercher’s mother and sister cried at the verdict.
“The sentence is fair and satisfactory for the family,’’ said their lawyer, Francesco Maresca. “It was a heartfelt sentence. There is deep suffering on all sides.’’
Throughout the trial, prosecutors depicted Knox as a promiscuous and manipulative she-devil whose personality clashed with her roommate’s. They say Knox had grown to hate Kercher.
“It appears clear to us that the attacks on Amanda’s character in much of the media and by the prosecution had a significant impact on the judges and jurors and apparently overshadowed the lack of evidence in the prosecution’s case against her,’’ the Knox family statement said.
The eight-member jury was not sequestered.
Kercher’s body was found in a pool of blood with her throat slit on Nov. 2, 2007, in the bedroom of the house she shared with Knox while the two were studying in the medieval town of Perugia in central Italy. Prosecutors said the Leeds University student was murdered the previous night.
In Seattle, relatives and friends clasped hands as they watched the verdict on TV. “They didn’t listen to the facts of the case,’’ said Elisabeth Huff, Knox’s grandmother. “All they did was listen to the media’s lies.’’
Prosecutors argued that on the night of the murder, Knox and Sollecito met at the apartment where Kercher and Knox lived. They say a fourth person was there, Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast citizen who has been convicted in the murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Guede, who is appealing his conviction, says he was in the house the night of the murder but did not kill Kercher.
The prosecution said that Knox and Kercher started arguing and that Knox joined the two men in brutally attacking and sexually assaulting Kercher under “the fumes of drugs and possibly alcohol.’’
Defense lawyers described Knox, who made the dean’s list at the University of Washington, as a smart and cheerful woman, at one point even comparing her to the film character Amelie, the innocent and dreamy girl in the 2001 French movie of the same title.
That is the film Knox and Sollecito said they were watching at his home on the night of the murder, where they say they smoked marijuana and had sex. Knox said she went home the next morning and found the door to the house open and Kercher dead.
