NEW YORK (AP) — American student Amanda Knox says she's not returning to Italy for a new appeals trial over the 2007 killing of her British roommate even though, in her words, "everything is at stake," because she's innocent.

In an interview Friday on NBC's "Today" show, host Matt Lauer asked Knox if she worried that she was handing prosecutors an admission of guilt by not attending the trial.

The Seattle native responded, "I look at it of an admission of innocence." She says there's no trace of her in the room where her roommate, Meredith Kercher, was killed.

In March, Italy's supreme court ordered a new trial for Knox and her former Italian boyfriend. An appeals court in 2011 had acquitted both, overturning convictions by a lower court. The new appeals trial begins in Florence on Sept. 30.

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