Knox defense calls conviction grave error.

Byline: Colleen Barry and Frances D'Emilio

ROME -- Amanda Knox's defense lawyer urged Italy's highest court on Wednesday to overturn the American's conviction in the 2007 murder of her British roommate, calling it a ''grave judicial error.''

Knox faces 28 1/2 years in an Italian jail for the 2007 murder of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher in an apartment they shared in the university town of Perugia, after being convicted by a Florence appeals court last year along with her former Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito. Sollecito's defense will make its case on Friday, when the case resumes before the Court of Cassation.

Winding up Wednesday's full day of arguments, Knox defense lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova said the Florence court's conviction of Knox ''is not justice, it is a distortion of the facts.''

He argued, that based on analysis of blood stains, including two handprints on the victim's pillow, in Kercher's room and elsewhere in the house the two women shared, ''there is not one trace of Amanda in the room of the crime.''

''We are confronted with a very grave judicial error that must be set right,'' he said before asking the court to overturn...