After hearing her sentence, they waited up past midnight, made her warm milk and reassured her with hugs when she walked back into her cell.

Amanda Knox’s cellmates – a Roma, a woman from China and another from Kosovo – held a vigil on Saturday for the 22-year-old from Seattle. Prison guards who have befriended Knox over the past two years came by to check on her every 15 minutes, stopping to say a few words of support. “She’s down, very down,” said her lawyer, Luciano Ghirga, after the first prison visit Knox has been allowed since receiving her sentence. “I hugged her. She’s depressed, disappointed, all of those things.”

Everyone at Capanne prison just outside the picturesque Umbrian hilltop town of Perugia knows how hard it is to return to prison after a harsh conviction, especially one like Knox’s, fraught with controversy and uncertainty. In Knox’s case, it was 26 years for the murder of Meredith Kercher – a sentence she and her family say they will fight with all they’ve got.

The long-awaited decision came just after midnight, around 13 hours after the jury began deliberating. Even the presence of a special Italian security unit in and outside the courtroom couldn’t organise a queue, leaving the throng of international media to push and shove through a narrow wooden door. Inside the courtroom, the scene was gut-wrenching. As she was pronounced guilty, Knox leaned her head against the chest of her Perugian attorney and began to weep. Her little sister, Deanna, broke down and began shaking uncontrollably, her sobs echoing through the still room. Knox’s father and stepfather grew red in the face with anger and frustration. Several young inebriated Italians shouted “assassini” at Curt Knox and his two young daughters as they walked back to their hotel, without any security escorts, but followed by numerous paparazzi. “Hell yes,” he said later that evening when asked if he would appeal.

Any future appeal will probably revolve around the series of police mistakes and forensic oversights that clouded this trial. For example, defence lawyers argued trace DNA readings on the kitchen knife alleged to be the murder weapon were mishandled. Knox also claims she was mistreated during an interrogation session without a lawyer present, which police deny. An appeal can be lodged after the judge has delivered his full explanation of the sentence.

As the sentence was read, tears also ran down the pained faces of two female jurors who stood trembling as the scene unfolded. The Kerchers also grew emotional, in memory of the daughter and sister they lost, who had just received “a little bit of justice”, as Meredith’s sister Stephanie put it yesterday. After two years of showing the world “the elegance of silence”, as their lawyer described their reserve, the Kercher family finally spoke publicly about the trial and the jury’s sentence Saturday. “Ultimately we are pleased with the decision,” said Meredith’s brother, Lyle. “But it is not the time for celebration. It is not a moment of triumph. We got here because our sister was brutally murdered and taken away from us.”

The Kerchers were the only ones to stay silent over the course of the past two years as the rift over Knox’s guilt or innocence poisoned international debate and garnered tawdry headlines. The divide fractured largely down national lines and spawned a cottage industry of blogs, books and films. Media pundits, lawyers and armchair detectives pinned their reputations on the case.

Much attention was paid to Knox’s theatrical character and odd behaviour, which police testified had made them suspect her from the start, but which her lawyers argued may have been misunderstood cultural and generational differences. She seemed flippant in the face of tragedy, police said, and spoke crassly about Kercher’s death to her English friends, who testified about habits that bothered Kercher, such as not flushing the toilet, leaving condoms in plain sight, or strumming the same chord on the guitar over and over again. At one point she did a cartwheel in the hallway while waiting to be questioned.

And much was made of her sexual history, revealing a number of old-fashioned stereotypes about women that hinged on an ancient Catholic double narrative: saint or sinner? Knox, the innocent American abroad being smeared in a corrupt foreign system, or Knox the calculating “luciferina” who let her hate and jealousy for her flatmate spiral out of control. “She-devil or Santa Maria Goretti?” one lawyer asked. More “Amélie from Seattle” than “Amanda the Ripper”, a defence lawyer countered.

Asked if the family had qualms about supporting the prosecution’s contested theories, Meredith’s brother John said: “In order to be involved with this case, that’s the line we needed to take. But it is not for us to decide. We are not the detectives, the lawyers, or the judge and jury.” Kercher’s mother, Arline, said she agreed with the verdict. “You have to go with the evidence. Because that’s all there is.”

The family expect Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, who was sentenced to 25 years, to seek appeals. In interviews with American television networks, Knox’s parents, Curt Knox and Edda Mellas, reiterated their belief that their daughter is innocent, saying, “We will continue to fight for her freedom”.

In other developments yesterday, a senator from Washington, Maria Cantwell, issued a blistering statement saying the case had revealed serious “flaws in the Italian justice system”. When asked about the criticism, the British consul, David Broomfield, refrain­ed from comment, saying he was present in Perugia solely to “be with the family”. But legal scholars say while the specific case may have revealed doubts about how the investigation was handled, that doesn’t necessarily reflect on the Italian trial procedure.

“From my observations this was a fair trial,” said Stefano Maffei, a researcher in Italian criminal procedural law at the University of Parma. “And while it may seem slow to those in the US and UK, it actually progressed at a normal pace for a trial in Italy that is so high profile.”