Amanda Knox lawyer: She's no "femme fatale"

Last Updated 11:58 a.m. ET

PERUGIA, Italy - A defense lawyer has told a court to see Amanda Knox, the American student convicted of killing her roommate, not as the "femme fatale" her accusers describe but rather as a loving young woman.

Giulia Bongiorno even compared Knox to the cartoon character Jessica Rabbit, saying Tuesday she is faithful like the "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" character.

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Knox was convicted of murdering Meredith Kercher, a British student in Perugia, and sentenced to 26 years in prison, while co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years.

Bongiorno, Sollecito's lawyer, paraphrased a famous line from the movie saying Knox "is not bad, she's just drawn that way."

"Jessica Rabbit looks like a man-eater, but she is a faithful and loving woman," Bongiorno said.

Bongiorno said Knox was really an immature girl who had just started dating Sollecito. "One should not mistake tenderness for sexual obsession," Bongiorno said.

Knox and Sollecito deny wrongdoing. They insist they spent the night at his house the night of the murder, watching a movie, smoking pot and having sex. The movie they said they were watching, "Amelie," led Bongiorno in the original trial to compare Knox to the title character, an innocent girl intent on doing good.

CBS News correspondent Charles D'Agata reports that Knox's defense team said the American student was young and vulnerable and psychologically persuaded to make false confessions and false accusations.

A verdict in the appeals case is expected by next week.

On Monday, prosecutors tore into Knox, accusing her of being "an explosive mix of drugs, sex and alcohol," and a master of deceit at the time of the murder.

The scathing attack came from lawyers representing Patrick Lumumba, the innocent man who Knox originally blamed for the murder.

Knox's mother says hostile Italian interrogators put the idea in her head.

"The police are the ones that told her 'we know he was involved, we know he was there, we know you were with him,'" Edda Mellas tells D'Agata in Perugia. "After, I don't know, 12 hours no food, no rest, the hitting, the screaming, the shouting, the terrorizing of her, she finally said, 'well ok, maybe this, maybe that'."

Knox immediately took back the accusation, but the damage had been done.

The contradiction in her testimony was one of the more persuasive arguments that helped convince jurors she and Sollecito were guilty in the first trial.

Knox's family is optimistic they'll see a different outcome this time. But they're still anxious.

"Sitting and waiting for a verdict that you don't know for sure which way it's going to come down is agonizing," Mellas tells CBS News. She says the appeal is reminding her painfully of the first trial.