American student Amanda Knox guilty of murder in Italy

Street demonstrations in Italy in the days preceding Berlusconi’s address evinced a palpable lust among many Italians for their pound of flesh from the Americans - no matter the facts in this case.

[Italians accuse Americans of murder and deceit, TIJ, March 11, 2005]

Many legal analysts in America are asserting that Amanda Knox (22) was convicted and sentenced to 26 years in prison on Saturday, not based on evidence, but merely as payback for the Americans who got away with committing two alleged crimes against Italians in recent years:

The first of these alleged crimes occurred in 1998 when an American fighter pilot, flying too low over an Italian ski resort, clipped the cable of a gondola, sending 20 people plunging to their deaths; and the second occurred in 2005 when an American soldier in Iraq killed an Italian operative who was on a secret mission there to rescue (or pay ransom for) an Italian journalist being held hostage.

I too suspect that some payback was involved. Indeed, the opening quote above - from my commentary on the second on these alleged crimes - presaged this revenge.

I am also mindful, however, that anti-Americanism was so pandemic when Amanda was arrested in November 2007 that reporting on her case in many European countries evinced this palpable lust for a pound of flesh. And nowhere was it more palpable than in England, the home of the girl she was convicted of murdering.

Instead, I am far more troubled by the fact prosecutors produced woefully scant evidence to support the sensational claims they made during this trial.

For, on the one hand, they argued that Amanda is a spoiled American girl who killed her British roommate, Meredith Kercher (21), in a fit of jealous and petulant rage for treating her like a messy, thieving slut.

While on the other, they argued that she is a dope and sex fiend who killed this “prissy” English girl in a depraved and premeditated scheme to teach her a lesson; and that pursuant to this scheme she and her Italian boyfriend of two weeks, Raffaele Sollecito (25), solicited a black African immigrant, Rudy Guede (22), to brutally rape Meredith in the home she shared with Amanda, after which Amanda repeatedly stabbed her and slit her throat in a perverted frenzy fueled by drugs and alcohol. Got that?!

All three were arrested and charged with murder in fairly short order.

Insisting that she had nothing to do with this crime, Amanda testified that the police beat conflicting statements out of her. She claimed that they even forced her to falsely implicate local bar owner Patrick Lumumba - who was probably the only black man she could think of under duress to finger for the crime….

Meanwhile, the only forensic evidence prosecutors submitted to support their charges against her was a knife the police took from Raffaele’s apartment, which they claim had traces of her DNA.  But defense experts testified that the blades on this knife were inconsistent with wounds Meredith suffered.

Moreover, Amanda’s lawyers argued that the only credible evidence placed only one person at the scene of this horrific crime, and that that person was not Amanda the American, but Guede the African.

Not to mention that Guede had already confessed to raping and killing Meredith alone, telling the police, at least initially, that he had never even met Amanda Knox. 

And since he had already been tried, convicted and sentenced to 33 years in prison, one can see why defense lawyers maintained that the prosecution of Amanda reflected the ruthless and vindictive ambition of lead prosecutor Giuliano Mignini. 

Indeed, it’s instructive to note that, when he filed charges in this case, Prosecutor Mignini was already under investigation for proffering “bizarre and lurid psycho-sexual homicide theories” in his attempt to win convictions in another murder case.

Alas, given the adverse publicity that attended this trial, with local media parroting the prosecutors’ alternating theories of the crime as unimpeachable facts, it is hardly surprising that Amanda’s jurors, who were never sequestered, ended this one-year show trial by convicting her after only 14 hours of deliberation.

I am saddened by the verdict and I have serious questions about the Italian justice system and whether anti-Americanism tainted this trial. The prosecution did not present enough evidence for an impartial jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms. Knox was guilty… I will be conveying my concerns to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

(US Senator Maria Cantwell of Amanda’s home state of Washington)

Notwithstanding this verdict, however, it smacks of an unseemly mix of arrogance and hypocrisy for everyone from pundits to politicians in the US to be hurling self-righteous indignation at the Italian justice system. 

After all, one would be hard-pressed to find a judicial system that is guilty of more egregious miscarriages of justice than America’s: There are of course the more notorious cases like OJ and the Duke Lacrosse players. But I’m thinking here of its shameful legacy of convicting, and in some cases executing, blacks for crimes they did not commit.

Therefore, instead of criticizing the jurors and condemning the Italian justice system, Amanda’s supporters would be well-advised to just pray that Italy’s appellate courts do in this case what they do in many other cases, namely, overturn guilty verdicts that offend all notions of justice.

Related commentaries:
Italians accuse Americans…
Rogue prosecutor in Duke case disbarred