Day one of the Meredith Kercher murder trial was meant to be about documents, procedural matters and charge sheets. Instead, defence lawyers exploited the media spotlight to launch impassioned speeches on behalf of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, saying they were not murderers but innocent “lovebirds”.

Ms Knox, 21, poised and relaxed, entered the court in Perugia smiling broadly, dressed casually in a grey hooded sweatshirt and striped Tshirt. During breaks she chatted to her lawyers, Carlo della Vedova and Luciano Ghirga, and to her female interpreter.

The bespectacled Mr Sollecito, 24, wearing a lime-green sweater and cream polo neck and with his flowing hair cut short, occasionally glanced along the row at Ms Knox sitting a few feet away. His former girlfriend kept her head turned away from him.

The pair are accused of killing Ms Kercher, a British student who was studying Italian in the town. She was found seminaked on November 2, 2007, with her throat slashed in the hillside cottage she shared with Ms Knox and two Italian women.

Police found Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito, an IT student from a wealthy southern Italian family, at the house, but the two claimed that they had only just got there. The prosecution case is that Ms Kercher died in a sex game that went wrong involving Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast immigrant, drifter and small-time drug-dealer. He has already been given 30 years for his part in the crime. Guede did not attend the opening of the trial but is expected to testify.

Yesterday the charges against the pair were read out: murder, sexual violence, simulation of a break-in by smashing a window and theft of cash and credit cards. In addition Patrick Diya Lumumba, a Congolese barman whom Ms Knox at first accused of the murder, is seeking damages.

In a forceful speech Mr della Vedova told the court that the confession in which Ms Knox made the accusation and admitted being present at the scene of the crime had been ruled inad-missable by the Court of Cassation because it was made at night without a lawyer present, violating her rights.

The most eloquent performance, however, came from Mr Sollecito’s barrister, Giulia Bongiorno, a prominent lawyer who is also a parliamentary deputy. Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito had been “lovebirds” who had no need of “kinky sex” with others, she said – to repeated interruptions from the prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, who protested that the trial proper had not begun and that speeches should wait.

Undeterred, Ms Bongiorno declared there had been no sex and drugs party at the cottage the night Ms Kercher died – “no glasses, no bottles, no drugs”. The DNA evidence against Mr Sollecito was flawed and the defence would prove that he had never even met Guede, she said.

At the start of the trial Judge Gian-carlo Massei rejected an application by the Kercher family’s lawyer to hold all proceedings behind closed doors because of the nature of the evidence on sexual violence. He ruled that all evidence would be held in public, except when the court agreed that it would cause particular offence to the victim’s family. Closed sessions would be decided on a “case by case” basis, the judge said.

Judge Massei set the next hearing for February 6, with a timetable of hearings on Fridays and Saturdays thereafter. Six jurors were sworn in.

Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito did not sit in the cages normally used for defendants accused of serious crimes. Fifteen journalists occupied the cages because of the shortage of seats. The judge later ordered them to be moved.

Times Recommends

• Please help: maimed children of war want their lives back
• Cabal seizes diamond riches to buy power
• White House gatecrashers got to the president