New Appeals Trial Begins Today for Amanda Knox

Amanda Knox is back on trial for murder but not back in an Italian courthouse.

Knox was acquitted two years ago for the 2007 murder of her roommate, 21-year-old Meredith Kercher. But that ruling was overturned by Italy's highest court in 2011 due to lack of evidence, and she returned home to Seattle.

Now she will not return to Italy for the retrial.

In an interview with CNN earlier this year, Knox said “I’m afraid to go back there. I don’t want to go back into prison. I don’t want them to all of a sudden do a court order when I’m there just respecting the court and going there and the prosecution ask that I be put into preventative detention again. I mean, I was there for four years.”

“Today’s hearing is largely procedural, they have not yet begun to reexamine the evidence in this case,” reports CNN’s Erin McLaughlin. But in the eyes of the Italian prosecutors, both Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito stand responsible for Kercher’s grisly murder.

“If convicted, Knox will be ordered to return to Italy. If she refuses, Italy could request her extradition from the United States,” McLaughlin says.

HLN’s Dr. Drew Pinsky weighs in with his take on the psychology behind Knox’s situation.