When I was in northern Italy last May, I was taken aback by the smart, professional Italians I talked to who were more-than-convinced that Amanda Knox was guilty of murder. Not only that, they were very defensive about it. I tried in vain to argue that the DNA evidence did not point to Knox, or her co-defendant, and that the Italian prosecutor had overreached, to say the least. But for these good people, more was at stake: saving face. Now, after Knox's acquittal, they will have to live with the consequences of their denial, or remain in it.
Last spring, while in Venice, the Knox case was simmering beside the "bunga bunga" party scandal that befell Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The debate in the Knox case centered on new tests of the DNA evidence in the 2007 brutal stabbing death of 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher, Knox's college roommate in Perugia, in central Italy. Why did so many Italians hold onto their belief that Knox did it, in the face of faulty evidence? In America, commentators had long chalked it up to saving of face, a kind of national self-consciousness among Italians -- the "honor" of their country, and the effectiveness of their judicial system, stood in the balance.
But to stay true, they had to cling to a lot of assumptions they'd held onto the four years since the murder. To them, the police in Perugia were professional and handled DNA evidence properly. DNA evidence linking Knox to the murder, they'd insist, WAS found at the scene (even though none was found in victim Kercher's bedroom). The flamboyant prosecutor in Perugia, Giuliano Mignini, was professional, a hero in the face of international pressure to drop the case. The homicide very well could have been a sex game that went too far. For instance, look at the numbered list of seven sex partners the then-20-year-old Knox had prior to the murder (three over a matter of weeks while in Italy). The handwritten list was requested of her -- and craftily leaked to the media -- by Italian prosecutors. So, Knox was loose sexually. She fit a stereotype some Italians believe, that the "typical American girl is secretly some kind of monster." Some claimed she and her Italian co-defendant and former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were spoiled kids who pinned the whole crime on an African drifter named Rudy Guede (who is serving 16 years for Kercher's murder).
What about the DNA evidence? Well, they'd say, Italians were just as skilled as their American counterparts in handling and interpreting scientific information (until the release of video showing the inept mishandling by Italian investigators of Kercher's bra clasp, a key piece of prosecution evidence). But while DNA data is seen as crucial in TV detective show-obsessed America, many Italians saw them as merely technical details. The circumstantial evidence convinced many in Italy of Knox's guilt, and in conversations, these stories were recited over and over.
In particular, Knox's weird behavior after the slaying pointed to someone not completely sane and, perhaps, capable of murder. She kissed her boyfriend while police went through the murder scene; at one point, she did cartwheels with police present; she signed a confession in which she said she heard Kercher scream and also falsely accused a café owner -- later found to have had an alibi -- as the one who killed Kercher; she claimed she and Sollecito watched a movie on a laptop computer the night of the murder, but Sollecito failed to remember that; she smiled strangely in court as if the proceedings were a joke; she did not seem to feel sorry enough for Kercher.
What possibly could have been Knox's motive? The speculation (far-fetched) was that maybe Knox was angry with roommate Kercher -- who complained about the men Knox brought home -- and prosecutor Mignini theorized she wanted to scare her in a sex game, but Knox got stoned, a knife was introduced and the game went too far. Further, Guede (who unlike Knox, fled the country after the murder and was caught in Germany) testified that Knox and Sollecito were involved in the murder (even though Guede's DNA was everywhere in Kercher's room, and none of Knox's DNA was found there). Also, who was it who broke a window at the home Knox and Kercher shared, which police said was an attempted cover up, to make it look like a robbery occurred? (Kercher, in fact, was robbed of 250 euro).
To many Italians, the stories of Knox's bad behavior kept other, more significant concerns about the prosecution's case at bay. If the DNA evidence did not figure, if the knife prosecutors said killed Kercher, did not match her wounds, as the defense claimed, then these stories nonetheless kept her guilt alive. Her false accusation of the café owner was considered bad enough (wrongfully accusing someone who was not guilty!) regardless of whether her claim came after a 14-hour police interrogation without her lawyer present. It all added up.
With Knox (and Sollecito) now acquitted and freed, the soul-searching, or lack of it, begins in Italy. Some who remain skeptical may say the Italian appeals court decision acquitting Knox on Monday was political, not based on fact, or that the two are wealthy defendants who got off. Whatever the rationale, some in Italy, and elsewhere, will still complain that Knox got away with it.
These are not good times in Italy, for a number of unrelated reasons. The nation has no clear successor to Berlusconi and depends on his political skills despite his continuing embarrassments; the country's $2.2 trillion debt is the highest in Europe's Euro Zone, and S&P downgraded the country's credit rating in September, 2011. Now, the Knox case provides another sobering fact. But perhaps it's produced a face saving of another kind, from an Italian high court that made a rational decision, based on fact instead of gossip.
Jeff Burbank is a California-based author, freelance journalist, adjunct lecturer at San Jose State University and a former Fulbright scholar in Azerbaijan.
Follow Jeff Burbank on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@JHuntB
I believe the true issue here might have more to do with differing cultures . Perhaps there is a general uneasiness with the idea that something as revolutionary as DNA could possibly hold more weight than the appearance of guilt due to circumstantial evidence. After all, we haven't had the technology for all that long. It would be easy to be suspicious of it. While I will agree the circumstantial evidence seemed insurmountable. I would contend that was by design....that the evidence was constructed in such a way as to manipulate the narrative.
The theories the prosecution used drove the investigation from the start. Instead of working from a stand point of trying to disprove those theories, as any investigative body worth their salt would do. The prosecution began investigating with an eye toward proving those theories. Even though they did not fit the actual crime scene.
Perception is everything, and the exerpts I have read only re inforce my original perceptions. Maybe they are lies!
If so, I would advise those being quoted to get on the suing bandwagon. If they are true, they are damning.
As regards DNA, I believe Fox news has a You Tube video about the ridiculous standards the public requires now because they have watched to many CSI's . It seems American ionvestigators realise this and are nowcoming more to back up claims with other than physical evidence.
I agree with some of your sentences which are quite reasonable. As I said, we should read the books first.
Then say whether ther was (catch- phrase) NO EVIDENCE! I will NEVER cast balme on the italioans as I know if AK was English and Mereith American. all this would play out in the opposite way entirely. I think you know that deep down.
What makes you think these books are un-biased? On what site did you read the excerpts? If it's a guilter site, you can bet your bottom dollar it won't be anything pro-innocent.
As for Fox news, I don't believe their weather reports.
Therefore, the conversation that we should be having about the Italian judicial system shouldn't be in defense of it. It should be more about self-introspect as a civilized nation....what did we get wrong (and that is not to say by any means the US is without fault)? And as a citizen of that nation, wouldn't it be in your best interest to delve deeper into the true reason this whole thing came to be? Instead of getting caught up in the insecurities of misguided nationalism. I would find it more troubling that a system could be so easily manipulated. That the idea of injustice happening to anyone...even you, in your own country, based on such flawed logic and sentiment put forth by an easily manipulated investigative body?
I know, eventually these issues will be addressed within your nation. As a matter of fact, I believe the dialog has already started. I understand that a horrible tragedy befell Meredith. But in the lust for justice, do you find it comforting to know that two innocents would be sacrificed to quench the thirst for it? The idea indeed, that is what is needed to appease an insecure nation...that is what is more troubling to me. It should be to you also.
The evidence was challenged by payed campaigners.(That will never be right, never).
But there is absolutely NO DOUBT in my mind that there was enough for the Police to bring charges. Plain and simple. The Police would have been re miss to ignore it.
In the US, so they would have been arrested; although it is said that many guilty are going free today because people are afraid to convict - as has just occurred in Italy!).
I guess we have to accept that -but not be accused ourselves if we believe it a wrong choice! After all, OJ was universally convicted, in the Nation's opinion.
If the case wasn't good enough, the Knoxes should have had faith that they wouldn't be convicted.
The alternative to that, is that the Italians are not as "Just" as Americans!
Why do you have a problem with her family launching a campaign, paid or not, to get the truth out? Why are you so bitter about this in the face of what Magnini did. How do fault them and not Magnini or the tabloids? I just do not get your reasoning. It's simply ridicules.
By the way......you keep asserting OJ and other sensationalized cases as a defense. The majority of the population believes OJ killed his ex-wife and her friend. The majority here believe Knox to be innocent based on the forensics and the DNA, as well as Magnin's past abuses and penchant to believe in satanic fueled orgies. Your comparison is clearly lacking the proper context.
Knox trusted she would be aquitted the first time. This makes the case that she did trust the Italian judicial system. But it FAILED her. Why would you expect her family to sit quietly and watch the lies that convicted her in the first trial continue through the second?
Your arguments are based on weird ideas of what is and isn't acceptable....a window into why it is Amanda was railroaded to begin with.
All I remember saying is that I am not an expert on DNA ; and that in a house with a lot of people living in it, I think it is very much open to mis- interpretation and so it should not alwaYS be a deciding factor.
Also, that in a case currently discussed on TV, the computer was completely destroyed by the Washington DC police. So what's new..
Is that abusive???
If I am obsessed, there are others far more so than I-or don't you want to know.
They are obsessed with the payed campaign which started 3 days after the crime.
After all the arguments about Marriott, it has all been proudly admitted.
Just because there is silence and bias on this page, there is fury elswhere on many areas of the net, that Justice has been corrupted and sunk as low as Politics, and now is just as deceitful and aggressive!
I think it is SCANDALOUS and the future implictaions should be addressed more.
OJ should have used his money in this direction and he would now be Mr Clean in the Public mind.!
It is a case of character study more than anything else. I find that many people judge on perception rather than facts. They think emotionally instead of basing their judgment on evidence. How someone looks or acts, or more accurately, how people perceive how someone looks or acts, is more important than what the actual evidence shows..or doesn't show. The need to demonize, to only see that which supports their already established view, instead of trying to look at something from a different angle overrides everything else.
>After all the arguments about Marriott, it has all been proudly admitted.<
I don't understand this statement. Can you please clarify?
What is fabricated about the party alibi?
What is fabricated about his changing it ?
What is fabricated about his saying nothing on the stand?
I guess this was all so convincing the London papers took it for real.
Havent the lies gone far enough??
Isn't it time to wash ourselves and feel clean again?
Shouldn't the H.P wash it's hands of this like Caesar ! Can nobody take responsibility for anything.
Next week, we may find out Ghaddaffi is really alive, living secretly in Hollywood and starring in a movie about his life.
What fun it is making up stories...See, anybody can do it.
"....the police are supposed to respond to all this by patting her on th ehead.... One thing I notice about this case is that this acquittal was accomplished by calumny.- police, prosecutor, witneseses, interpreters,forensic scientists, and even some friends (Mr. Lumumba).and these calumniations are not venial either. The prosecutor is mentally unstable, the police used Stalinistic tactics, Mr. Lumumba did the murder; the scientists planted evidence; the Italians are backward. She is now going to go on television to say the prison authorities sexually harrassed her, and for this last one she will be paid. . "
I've got to say this last one may not be of her making..I still think she is being manipulated : as often happens with people whose early history was too strictly regulated.
The police didn't plant evidence, they merely were inept in their collecting and analyzing of it as proved by the independent experts.
Certainly paints a very clear picture of Magnini's penchant for power and abuse.
Leaving you with this.....if you find yourself even remotely capable of investing even a fraction of the time you have spent patroling these forums to get the word out that you think Knox and Sollecito to be guilty, than perhaps you might read this: http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/ ......if so, just maybe, maybe you could be worth talking to.
Spouting rhetoric from these guilter websites that has insnared you into believing the whole theory of Knox and Sollecito's murderous ways has clogged your mind.
"It couldn't be the other way round, could it ? : )"
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No.
It is great to see some real educated dissection of this case.
The patients have been stopped from running the asylum....
To say- O, if Meredith didn't lock her door and AK said she always did, does that mean she killed her??
How can you have a discussion with such people?
What it means only, is that she lies easily and the cumulative instances of such things lead you to weigh up her involvement. I don't think anybody had a campaign against her, only that all the contributions, of those involved, about her were negative.
If they liked her, wouldn't some of them have said so.
It wasn't til we got the million dolllar campaign that we heard they were still great friends. Somebody is not being honest.
"On True Justice for MK, people are going over all the evidence piece by piece"
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In other words, they are endlessly repeating long-discredited lies.
The crime scene was cherry picked to fit Magnini's narrative and evidence to the contrary was discarded. And yet, Italian's seem to identify the criticism of Magnini with some nationalistic pride.
Maginini is a cancer that should be irradicated of any judicial powers. He deserves no defense for his corrupted mind. He alone is responsible for the injustice that the Kercher's have suffered. He alone will be responsible for the blood that will be spilled after Guedes serves his short sentence and kills once again.
But make no mistake...your defense of this travesty tarnishes our perception of Italia pride. It is not to your credit.
Brigitta Bulgari, a Hungarian pornstar, was acquitted of indecent exposure.. Charged for a show that occurred 24 May 2010 in Perugia , she originally spent 11 days under isolation, with the charges brought by prosecutor Giuliano Mignini
These charges were quickly dismissed when she was eventually brought to trial with the statement there was no objective evidence to support her arrest. She is now seeking damages for having her name slandered by Mignini.
"I will ask damages" she announced" because he has soiled my name while I was only doing my job. Now that has ended the legal case that changed my life gather the notes written in my cell and I will write a book. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigitta_Bulgari
She announced solidarity with Amanda Knox:
"I feel sorry for her, Bulgari said, stressing that its investigation and the one that concerned the American student have been conducted by the same judge (Mignini). I believe that the investigation, should have been carried out in more detail . After eleven days in prison, I struggled to find my place in the world, let alone her after four years. "
http://www.gabnar.com/var/albums/Brigitta%20Bulgari/Brigitta%20Bulgari%20%286%29.jpg?m=1300874047
Millions of dollars in free press handed to Mignini all in the effort to cast Knox as a sx crazed, sadi stic killer. It didn't even matter to Mignini if the accusations were used in court....he knew potential jurors would be subjected to the defamation of Knox. And the salacious tabloids didn't care a whit! Not as long as they could sell, sell, sell their sordid story to the public making millions in the process. John Kercher complicit...you bet. He was out for revenge and used his standing within the world of the tabloid media he made a living off of to sabotage Knox's chance at a fair trial.
And you have the audacity to fault the Knox family for trying to get the truth out? What a strange twist of thought it takes to make that statement.
Maybe in your world an innocent doesn't deserve a defense.
I do not believe people who came late to this issue, had ever read the real truth: the short story issue, seen the drunken videos, read the Seattle police incident.
The weird thing is many of us had, and we never heard anything to challenge this picture of a person taking the wrong road in Life, and really, crying out for help.
That does not mean she killed anybody.
It does mean that the people leaping on the bandwagon who would not listen to the truth, inferred that those who had read all of this, and also everyone's perceptions who knew her in Perugia, were made to seem evil or falsely accusing !
Do you expect that to have a positive outcome, to be told what you believe to be valid is wrong, and that suddenly new interpretations have been put on each incident, like a huge project.
These have proved to be a waste of time and money. The originals stand.
I am only surprised Huff Post allowed the Daily Mail reports many of us accept, to stand. If this were before she was freed, they would have been suppressed or more people would have been aware, and not under false delusions about her lifestyle!
I believe the time in Italy has helped her. I dont believe it helps her, to get her out of every scrape. Maybe Meredith died to help other lives improve.
Guede, who was proven to be there and had sex with Kercher, did not repeat the absurd claims by the prosecutor of a wild sex party gone wrong. He was smart enough to know that he would be tripped up over details by Knox's lawyer. So he just stuck with the simple story of saying he saw her shadow. it was enough to place her at the scene. The prosecutor, police and the tabloids did the rest of the dirty work.
"A more plausible explanation is - Meredith was no match for the THREE of them."
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Nope. The evidence is clear that Amanda and Raffaele were not on the scene, and that Guede did it alone.
Guede most likely surprised her and she got mortally injured before she could do anything significant in terms of saving herself. Her combined skills and athleticism may have been to her advantage otherwise but not when faced with a surprise, armed, physically stronger and taller, and determined killer who very likely dealt an initial blow to her neck to partially incapacitate her. Too many factors against her, poor girl.