The lawyers' comments were in response to a verdict delivered by the judges on Saturday after 10 hours of legal discussion. That verdict prompted screams of delight from Knox, 27, who heard the news at her mother's home in Arbor Heights, Seattle.
Anxious not to appear triumphal, Knox restricted herself to a brief statement outside the family residence, where tears poured down her face as she talked.
"I'm still absorbing the present moment, which is full of joy," she told reporters. "I'm grateful to have my life back."
Friends and supporters, though, showed less restraint, delivering bottles of champagne to the Knox doorstep, and dancing in the street. Down the road at Salty's, a seafood restaurant, there was the sound of fireworks and cheers throughout the afternoon as a wider crowd of supporters gathered.
It was a different mood, however, 11,265km away at the Kercher family home in Coulsdon, Surrey.
Kercher's bereaved family have never made public their views on the question of Knox's culpability, but the verdict got only a brief and muted reaction from Meredith's mother, Arline.
"They have been convicted twice so it's a bit odd that it should change now," she said. She was, she added, "surprised and very shocked" at the ruling.
The definitive acquittal of Knox and her former boyfriend, who had known each other for just a few days when they were accused of the killing, marked the end of nearly a decade of investigation into what really happened on the night of November 1, 2007, when Kercher, 21, ended up lying in a pool of her own blood at the house she shared with Knox in the university town of Perugia, north of Rome.
Police and prosecutors quickly came up with the theory that she had been murdered during a sex game involving Knox, Sollecito, and Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast immigrant who had come to Italy as a small boy but drifted into drug dealing and petty crime.
Guede was found guilty of murder after a fast-track trial and sentenced to 30 years in jail, reduced to 16 on appeal. He remains behind bars.
The supreme court now has 90 days in which to issue its "motivazione", a detailed explanation of how it came to the verdict. But it is unlikely to resolve many of the abiding mysteries of the case.
Sollecito, 31, who was at his father's home near Bari when he heard the verdict, broke down in tears. "Is it really over?" he asked repeatedly.
"You could hardly quantify a compensation figure, it has been such an awful business. We were pilloried," said his father, Francesco Sollecito, a doctor.
Beyond a compensation hearing, it now seems unlikely that the case will ever return to the Italian legal system again.
