BOISE — Perhaps the world’s most famous exoneree, Amanda Knox was more than a year into her wrongful imprisonment when Boise State professor and Idaho Innocence Project founder Greg Hampikian contacted her family.
The Seattle native was in the midst of what would be the first of three trials for the 2007 murder of her British study-abroad roommate, Meredith Kercher, in Italy. She was convicted, acquitted and released, then re-convicted in absentia — ultimately spending four years in prison and four more on trial before the Italian Supreme Court definitively exonerated her in 2015.
“Tons of people were reaching out to my family at the time, including crazy amounts of press who were all descending on my family’s homes, but he was the first person who had specific expertise in DNA science and wrongful convictions,” Knox, now 39, said. “He became this incredible resource to them, even just to explain to them what was going on.”…