Amanda Knox, the

American student convicted of killing her roommate, isn't a

manipulative, sex-obsessed witch as her accusers accuse of being, but

is rather like Jessica Rabbit – just drawn that way, a defence lawyer has told an Italian court.

Lawyer Giulia

Bongiorno drew comparisons between Knox and the Who Framed Roger Rabbit cartoon character, saying her client

had been unfairly portrayed during the media-hyped,

four-year case.

She said the 24-year-old American

instead displayed immaturity and

naivete at the time of the 2007 slaying.

The pair strenuously deny any wrongdoing and both have appealed their 2009 convictions. A verdict in the appeals case is expected in early October.

"She can be seen as a man-eater. But in fact she was a faithful

woman in love," Giulia Bongiorno said, before quoting the

cartoon vamp: "I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way." And jabbing a

finger at the prosecutors, she said: "They drew her that way."

Her

brief foray into the world of animated cartoons was the prelude to a

vigorous assault on the prosecution case in which she came within a

hair's breadth of claiming that, like Roger Rabbit, her client and his

former girlfriend had been framed. In 2009, a lower court decided

Sollecito and Knox murdered Kercher in a drug-fuelled sex game with a

third man, Rudy Guede.

Yet, said Bongiorno, "in the room of the crime,

there are no traces of either Amanda or Raffaele. This is the absolute

truth". The only alleged evidence was a trace of Sollecito's DNA on

Kercher's bra clasp, and that was evidence "torn apart by the experts'

report".

Bongiorno

is Sollecito's lawyer, but, with the fates of the two defendants

intertwined, she discussed Knox's role in the case at length.

By

the media as well as in court, Knox has either been described either as

a manipulative "she-devil" or as an innocent girl caught in a judicial

inferno in a foreign land. Bongiorno said she was really an immature

girl who had just started dating Sollecito.

Kercher, 21, was stabbed to death in the

apartment she shared with Knox.

Knox and Sollecito insist they spent

the night at his house the night of the murder, watching a movie,

smoking pot and having sex. The movie they said they were watching,

Amelie, led Bongiorno in the original trial to compare Knox to the

title character, an innocent girl intent on doing good.

Bongiorno

also looked at DNA evidence linking her client to the crime, most

notably an alleged trace on the bra clasp of the victim.

Prosecutors

maintain that Sollecito's DNA was on the clasp of Kercher's bra as part

of a mix of evidence that also included the victim's genetic profile.

A

court-ordered review of evidence, carried out by independent experts,

said the attribution could not be certain and highlighted the risk of

contamination on the clasp, which was collected from the crime scene 46

days after the murder.

The review significantly

weakened the prosecution case, giving the defendants hope that they

might be freed after four years behind bars.

Bongiorno said "that piece of evidence must be considered unusable".