The trial of Amanda Knox, the 22-year-old Seattle student accused of murder and sexual assault in Perugia, Italy, resumes on Friday, and a verdict is expected in early December.

It’s crunch time for Amanda, who has sat through the trial for nearly a year. Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, are both suspects in the grisly murder of Knox’s former roommate, English student Meredith Kercher.

Meanwhile, the appeal for Rudy Guede, the Ivory Coast native who had opted for a speedy trial in the same case and was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in jail, began today.

“I want the Kercher family to know that I didn’t kill and I didn’t rape their daughter,” Guede told the court in Perugia.

Guede’s lawyers said they will prove his innocence, although they have their work cut out for them. Guede is the only one of the three suspects who admits being in the house at the time of the murder – he says he was in the bathroom – and he also fled Italy shortly after the murder. He was arrested in Germany.

“I went into a state of shock” Guede told the court in describing the condition in which he found Kercher after hearing her scream. He said the only problem his conscience gives him is that he didn’t do more to help Meredith as he saw her bleeding in agony.

Prosecutors contend Kercher was stabbed to death on the night of Nov. 1, 2007,  during a sex game gone horribly wrong.

Knox and Sollecito both maintain their innocence, and have spent more than two years in prison.

The trial began in January, and while both defense lawyers and the prosecution have scored points, neither has delivered a knockout blow.

The defense tried repeatedly to show that forensic work both at the crime scene and in the lab has been shoddy, and pressed for an independent review of the evidence, but without success.

And despite some strange behavior and strange statements by Knox and Sollecito right after the brutal murder, it doesn’t appear the prosecution has shown hard evidence proving their guilt.