As anglo said, the extradition process is more political than legal. I doubt the US will want to upset a long time ally.
If you or Anglo are suggesting that the US will simply rubber stamp an extradition request by Italy for A Knox then you are both sadly mistaken.
First Italy is hardly a long time ally. Second Italy has an extremely bad record of human rights violations against defendants by its courts.
It is far from a political matter only. Knox will certainly have the opportunity to bring an appeal case against extradition. And she will certainly do this and when the case is laid bare in a US court then there is no way in hell Knox would ever be returned to Italy. Impossible!
Consider the following case (notice the full article my be limited to memebers)
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2164207,00.html
You can Google this sweetie hiding out in the Netherlands collecting 700 Euros/mth welfare as he fights extradition on the most unlikely of excuses...but next stop for him is ECOHR say his state provided lawyers...that's if he loses in Netherlands.
And this is a terrorist likely responsible for killing 39 people. And we just want to give him a fair trial before hanging him...errr just kidding... no death penalty for him. But he hasn't even been tried yet and the excuse against extradition is that the USA
may have known that the Pakistanis
may have beaten him.
To suggest that USA will simply turn over Knox to maintain a long time "ally" relationship with a questionable country (ITALY) nearly in collapse and who cant keep a government in place for more than 1 year is completely absurd! Did I mention their less than stellar record of violations with the ECOHR?
Forget double jeopardy. That will not be a part of the case. Rather the human rights violations of Italy of severe lack of duty to provide anything close to a fair trial added to the complete absence of any effort to provide a speedy trail will be way more than enough to block extradition to Italy.
Italy may not even be able to afford the stamp for a letter requesting Knox extradition. Who thinks Germany will lend them one more dime to buy one?
Get real. The USA could care less about Italy. They only make the news when someone else pulls a major boner like driving a modern cruse ship onto the rocks or jailing scientists for failure to predict earthquakes or freeing 60 year old pedophiles who are in love with 11 year old girls. I think the PM change after less than a year made page 6. They are foolish clowns doing foolish things that they are letting leak into the mainstream press. Do they think the world is not out looking for the next big laugh?
Go ahead Italians ...lock up Solecito. Knox WILL REMAIN free here in America. Lets see how that works out for you.