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Knox: innocent abroad or ‘getting away with murder’?
There may be just enough reasonable doubt to convince a jury that Amanda Knox should be freed
WITH summations in Amanda Knox's appeal trial kicking off in Perugia this Friday, the young American and her loyal troupe of family and friends from Seattle are pinning their hopes on the defence's attempts to poke holes in the forensic evidence against her.
If Knox is acquitted of murdering her 21-year-old British roommate Meredith Kercher - and many observers in Italy believe it's likely - she will go down in history as one of more than 4 million victims of judicial errors or unjust detention in post-war Italy (according to statistics from Eurispes).
But she is unlikely to escape the indignation of some Italians who believe that Americans always seem to get away with murder in their country.
Many recall the Cavalese cable car accident in 1998, when an US Marines pilot, flying faster and lower than the Pentagon's orders, clipped a cable, causing a ski gondola to plunge 80 metres to the ground. The operator and 19 passengers died on impact.
The pilot and his navigator were acquitted of manslaughter when they were tried at home in the US. When it transpired they had destroyed the videotape recorded from the plane on the day of the accident, they were found guilty of obstruction of justice and dismissed from the Marines. But they were not recalled to face homicide charges, to the outrage of the Italian public.
In 2006, a New York Army National Guard soldier shot and killed Italian secret service agent Nicola Calipari in Iraq as he was trying to liberate journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who was also shot. Italian prosecutors indicted him on murder charges and attempted to try him in absentia, but it went nowhere.
Most recently, in 2009, a judge convicted former CIA Milan station chief, Robert Seldon Lady, along with 22 others accused of being CIA agents, of kidnapping an Egyptian cleric off the streets of Milan for an extraordinary rendition.
None of them is doing jail time in Italy.
If Knox is acquitted now, Italian prosecutor Guliano Mignini has implied he will immediately appeal. But by the time the courts get around to it, Knox will likely be long gone home to Seattle. If she were then convicted by Italy's court of cassation, it could trigger a 'caso Battisti' situation, say legal observers.
Cesare Battisti is an Italian man convicted of four murders in Italy during the political upheaval of the 1970s. He fled to France, then Mexico, then Brazil, where he was given political refugee status. Brazil refused to extradite him and eventually let him out of prison, to the ire of Italian authorities.
But Italians are a forgiving people. They know their judiciary is often partisan and sometimes gets it wrong, and they would rather see a guilty person go free than someone possibly innocent kept behind bars.
And therein lies the crux of the Amanda Knox case. There may be just enough reasonable doubt to convince a jury that, regardless of the whole truth, Knox's precise role in the murder has not been proven solidly enough for a clean conviction.
An acquittal would be cause for celebration in Seattle, but the family of Meredith Kercher would be left distraught. In a letter to the court earlier this month, Meredith's sister, Stephanie, pleaded that her sister's death should not be "in vain". ·
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All the Americans here complaining would be better off worrying about the fact that an innocent man was put to death in their country last week. What if Knox had been given the death penalty? Would GOD be okay with that? His name is bandied about like it means something.
Amanda's supporters seem to forget that this case was not based on DNA evidence alone, in my opinion all three of them were involved and should remain in prison. I would like her supporters to explain her innocence without mentioning the word DNA and see how far they get. Also can they explain why Guede always maintains they were all involved even though it would not have any impact on his own case? They can also tell us why she has not been able to provide an alibi? She keeps changing her account of the events? the robbery was obviously staged? She tried to frame an innocent man? Who let Guede into the house and who locked the bedroom afterwards? When her supporters are asked these questions they say she was â??highâ?? and naïve an argument I do not buy because â??highâ?? people do not behave like that. May be they were some mistakes in collecting DNA but if she is released it will be the end of justice for Meredith, because the three of them know exactly what happened that day..
My experience is the Americans are a rule unto themselves. If the Italian courts free her now due to political pressure on the Italian legal system by the American government, which is obviously going on, you will never see her allowed our of the US and brought to trial again, even if it was found that she was guilty.
>> but I now queery as to weather the facts
Why do you never print the numerous reasons why this appeal panel may exonerate Amanda and Raffaele? The many, many pieces of evidence that show they are truly innocent? Like the fact that, contrary to Italian law, the police did not record the interrogation! I wonder why that might be? Like the fact that the police fried 4 hard drives with probable exculpatory evidence on them? "In vain" means pointlessly or for nothing. Unfortunately, Meredith has already died in vain. Keeping innocent people in prison will not give meaning to her death. What happened to Meredith was a horrible, senseless thing. May she rest in peace.
Ms. Vogt, Your article is a great example of what went wrong. I as an American was not in favor of Cavalse decisions, but I now queery as to weather the facts of the pilots and the out come were anything more than an aviation accident. The story is only told by one side. Yours. The CIA? A fleeing political soldier? Fleeing Amanda ran no where. Where does any of this fit in with a young women of 3 months into her 20th year visiting, attending school, and working in Italy being treated as politico! In fact that is the very desease that has polluted this entire mess. There has to be more you ask! There is not. An overly zealous politically driven lawyer and others who saw fit to attack a child of what must be described as their enemies. Throwing their power about to show what? They can bring down a school marm her children and the country they are from. These two jailed young adults deserve your acalades, as the adults around showed their bitter desires to do them harm for reasons other than what they are acused of. Your article itself describes this by saying Amanda should be punished because of other peoples dealings. My belief is she is squeaky clean, and GOD has had enough!
Ms Vogt, I find your article depressing in that it contains implied assumptions which are wrong and it seems, to some extent, to be an attempt to make this case, the Kercher murder case, part of an emotive conflict between Italy and the USA. The latter attempt is sad and silly, especially since Raffaele is Italian.
There is not, and there never was, any real evidence, either forensic or of any other type, against Amanda and Raffaele. There were pretences to evidence but they are, and were, sorry pretences, to say the least. Amanda and Raffaele were framed and persecuted, as in a witch hunt, in a trial by media. That is clear, and without room for doubt, to a person who looks at the case in an objective way.
Amanda and Raffaele are hard-working students of excellent character. Such people do not commit a terrible crime even when under a great pressure to do so, if such a pressure could exist. But there could be no such pressure and there is not even a conceivable motive that anyone can suggest. There is just a series of preposterous scenarios presented by the prosecution.
Considering that Amanda lived in the apartment so that her DNA would therefore have been liberally spread throughout the apartment and that she would have probably cooked with Raffaele's kitchen knives, the so-called forensic evidence has no probative value.
For an educated view of the so-called evidence, I refer you to 'Injustice in Perugia' by Bruce Fisher and 'The Monster of Perugia' by Mark Waterbury.
In light of the evidence reviewed during the appeal and the rest, which remains substantial and unchallenged, the question for many will remain exactly the one posed here if this court decides that there is enough doubt about Knox's exact role in Meredith Kercher's death to acquit. And in this case, the whole truth will probably never emerge. Thanks for your consistently intelligent and fair reporting on this case and for never forgetting to mention the Kerchers and Meredith.
Come on Andrea, as we have discussed many times face to face over nearly two years - there is not the slightest shred of evidence against these two lovers, nor was there ever. The problem was you and many other journalists swallowed the lies fed by a grossly psychopathological and incestuous polizio-judicial system in Perugia, controlled by Megapischopath Giuliano Mignini. You then fed them to a gullible and paying public, (amongst whom at the start, though no longer, I count myself). Please can we meet on Friday over a coffee in Perugia, and go over the evidence which points to a criminal framing by those who are paid to solve crimes, not cause them, and who are there to convict and imprison the guilty, not the innocent? At least Nick Pisa, who at the start was as conveniently gullible as any, had the good sense to do this when we first met last November.
Ms. Vogt,
I assume you disapproved of the destruction of the tape in the cable car incident. The best evidence against either Knox or Sollecito was the bra clasp, and the police stored it improperly, allowing it to rot and to rust. Now it cannot be retested, and yet you said nothing. You similarly failed to indicate that the police and prosecution withheld DNA forensic files, the release of which is a â??near universalâ?? norm, according to one profiling expert. They tried to do the same with respect to the two court-appointed experts, but the judge saw through their shenanigans. The police also damaged multiple hard drives and destroyed meta-data (such as the time at which the file â??Stardustâ?? was accessed) on Sollecitoâ??s computer.
The prosecutionâ??s star witness was exposed as a heroin-addicted, small time drug dealer and serial witness. The prosecutionâ??s time of death made a mockery of human digestive physiology. None of these problems with the prosecutionâ??s case made it into your article, just facile comparisons to incidents unrelated to the present one.
Why must you try to maintain that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are guilty and if they are released it will be because of lack of evidence and not because they are innocent? This case is one of the most disgraceful and artificially manufactured prosecutions of recent years. There was never any evidence. They were fitted up by a prosecutor who fantasises about sex rituals and is himself guilty of abuse of office. This case would never have made it to court in the UK or the US. As Sherlock Holmes (Conan Doyle) said, "It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." The First Post should be ashamed for attempting to perpetuate a lie. The real lone killer was Rudy Guede. He was correctly convicted and is in prison. His DNA was all over the victim and the murder scene.
Dear Andrea, I'm very surprised that you, having followed this case closely, still believe that the case against Amanda and Raffaele (do you keep forgetting about him?) still has some merit. Where have you been? Why don't you ever write about the crazy prosecution theories put forward by Mignini, or his own track-record? Why does this article not mention Rudy Guede, the obvious lone-rapist-murderer, who had a history of break-ins? I think you are trying to save face. You should know fine well, by now, that the case against Amanda and Raffaele (remember him?) has completely fallen apart, is totally preposterous, and succeeded the first time thanks to railroading and a poor uncriticially thinking press, spear-headed people like you. Shame on you.