Amanda Knox conviction

[Keith Ranville]

Italy strikes back at US complaints


US student Amanda Knox's conviction for the murder of her roommate in Italy, has sparked some complaints of an unfair trial. Prosecutors and the Italian press are striking back.

Rome - Italian judges angrily hit back Monday at American accusations that the 26-year prison sentence for college student Amanda Knox for the murder of her British flatmate was based on flawed evidence, a botched investigation, and a coerced confession.

The chief prosecutor in the case, whose call for Mr. Knox and an Italian man to be sentenced to life in prison was rejected by a jury in the Umbrian hill town of Perugia, said US criticism of the 11-month murder trial was unfair and unfounded.

American skepticism over the fairness of the trial has hurt Italian national pride, with the country's leading daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera, commenting: "The (US) administration cannot close Guantanamo, yet it finds the time to think about Perugia." (The US State Department has not commented on the verdict.)

Knox, from Seattle and her former boyfriend, computer science graduate Raffaele Sollecito, were found guilty Friday of sexually assaulting and murdering Meredith Kercher, who was on a year's exchange course from Leeds University in northern England when she was murdered on Nov. 1, 2007.

Mr. Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was given an extra year after the jury ruled that she had defamed a Congolese bar owner who lives in Perugia by falsely accusing him of the murder.

The prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, said the accusations of a miscarriage of justice from American legal pundits and Knox's supporters in the Pacific Northwest were aimed "at the Italian justice system, as much as at me personally".

"[The Americans] are saying there's not enough proof to convict these two kids, but how is it possible to argue that? It's unacceptable," Mr. Mignini said. "At the various levels in this case, from the preliminary investigating judge to the trial itself, the evidence was scrutinized by no less than 19 judges. This is about unacceptable interference."

Trial critics

Critics of the trial, including the Friends of Amanda Knox campaign group, have made much of the fact that Mr. Mignini is being investigated for abuse of office, including allegedly allowing the illegal wire-tapping of journalists, in a case involving a notorious serial killer dubbed by the Italian press the Monster of Florence. Those murders have not yet been solved.

Mignini was accused by a judge in Florence of being "in thrall to a sort of delirium" in his handling of the serial murders, in which he came up with theories of Satanic rituals and sadistic sex, just as he speculated that the killing of Kercher might have been fuelled by Halloween fantasies and Sollecito's taste for Japanese manga comics.

Supporters of Knox, including her family, have alleged that her conviction rested on unreliable DNA evidence, a disputed murder weapon, a "confession" which they say was bullied out of her after an all-night police interrogation, and the unfair influence of the Italian media.

Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini played down the chances the conviction would effect relations with the US on Sunday. Front page stories in the Italian press have alleged US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was planning to intervene in the matter, having been petitioned by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D) of Washington.

Ms. Cantwell said the 11-month trial was tainted by anti-American bias, perhaps overlooking the fact that Knox's codefendant is Italian.

Mr. Frattini said Mrs. Clinton's interest in the case "seems to me to be right and normal." Clinton had said only that she would listen to anyone who has concerns about the conduct of the case.

Frattini said that strong criticism of the trial had come from Knox's relatives and supporters, and it was wrong to confuse that with the position of the US government.

No motive offered

After a 13-hour deliberation, the eight-person jury found that Knox and Sollecito had stabbed Kercher in the neck during a violent sex game.

It failed, however, to offer a motive for the killing – suggesting that jurors were less than 100 percent convinced by the prosecution's lurid insistence that the murder was the result of Knox's alleged sexual deviancy and weeks of bitter arguments between the two women, who were both studying at Perugia's University for Foreigners.

The fact that the jury rejected the prosecution's request for life sentences also hinted at doubts about the couple's guilt, defense lawyers said.

Claudia Matteini, the judge who signed the arrest warrant for Knox and Sollecito a few days after Miss Kercher was found dead in her bedroom, said the condemnation of the Italian justice system by American commentators was offensive. "The trial followed all the right steps without a single irregularity," she said. "The investigation was conducted with absolute transparency."

The upcoming appeal

Lawyers for Knox and Sollecito are preparing appeals.

Giulia Bongiorno, a high-profile lawyer and member of parliament who led Sollecito's defense, said she was confident the convictions would be overturned on appeal, or at the very least the prison sentences would be reduced.

The first appeal, which is expected to start sometime in late 2010, could take up to a year. If that is rejected, Knox and Sollecito are entitled to go to a second appeal in front of Italy's Supreme Court. The whole process could take up to five years, judicial experts said.

Unlike in the US and Britain, where appeals are allowed on merit, in Italy all convicted criminals have the right to embark on an exhaustive, two-stage appeals process.

Massimo Consolini, an Italian law expert, said "the prospects are good" for Knox and her ex-boyfriend to have their convictions overturned.

The main problem with Italian law, he said, was not that it was hard to secure a fair trial, but that trials, and ensuing appeals, took so long.

Many cases are dropped altogether when they expire under Italy's complicated statute of limitations, which varies according to the severity of the allegations.

Italians have at times been upset with the course of US justice as well.

Italians were outraged after a US Marine fighter plane sliced into the cables of a ski gondola in northern Italy in 1998, killing 20 people. An American military jury acquitted the pilot of manslaughter.

More recently, an Italian court convicted 23 Americans in absentia — most of them CIA agents — on charges of kidnapping related to the "extraordinary rendition" of an Egyptian cleric.

The Muslim cleric was bundled off the streets of Milan in 2003 and flown to Egypt, where he alleges he was tortured.



http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1207/p06s22-woeu.html

[Keith Ranville]

Amanda Knox You Tube

[Keith Ranville]

Amanda Knox makes her plea: 'I am afraid of having the mask of a murderer forced onto my skin"

Amanda Knox talks with one of her lawyers during the closing arguments of her trial for murdering her roommate, Meredith Kercher. Knox asked a jury not to put the "mask of a murderer" on her as she and her boyfriend made emotional final appeals denying the murder of British student Meredith Kercher. (Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images)

PERUGIA, Italy -- Saying she feared having the mask of a murderer forced onto her skin, Amanda Knox pleaded with Italian jurors Thursday to acquit her of murder charges.

Dressed in a fitted green coat, her hair braided neatly, Knox said she wanted to share with the jurors a question she had been asked over and over in the days leading up to their decision.

"Everybody asks me, 'How do you stay so tranquil?' " said Knox in slow, but fluent Italian, her voice shaking, and with her family, university students, court observers and dozens of reporters and photographers listening closely.

"Well, I am not calm. I am afraid of losing myself. I am afraid of being for defined as someone I am not and for acts I did not commit. I am afraid of having the mask of a murderer forced onto my skin."

Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito have been in prison since being arrested November 2007 in the stabbing death of Knox's British roommate Meredith Kercher.



    Knox and Della Vedova
    Zoom   Getty Images
    Amanda Knox is comforted by her lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova during her trial. (Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images)
Both women were studying abroad in Perugia.

Sensing Knox was nervous as she stood up Thursday and said okay to gather herself to speak, presiding Judge Giancarlo Massei asked gently if she would rather speak in English, but she shook her head and chose to go forward in Italian.

She spoke with the encouragement of her Perugian lawyer, Luciano Ghirga, who sat at her side and patted her arm occasionally when she grew emotional.

She said she felt deluded, sad, frustrated and vulnerable as she stood before the jury, but still felt it was important to try to see the positive in moments like this.

She lovingly thanked her family and friends, who, Knox said, "saved my life every day."

She thanked her lawyers and, to the surprise of all listening, even thanked prosecutors Giuliano Mignini and Manuela Comodi, who she said "were just trying to do their jobs, even if they don't understand. They are trying to find justice for someone whose life was taken from this world."

Saying her conscience was clean, she told the jury: "Now it is up to you."

    Sollecito
    Sollecito
Earlier in the day, Sollecito also launched last-minute pleas for Italian jurors to give them back their lives.

"Why would I commit something so horrible as murder?" asked Sollecito, a computer-engineering graduate. "You are deciding my life. I am not living a nightmare anymore, but something far more dramatic."

Through it all, Knox has not changed, said the only woman on her defense team, Maria Del Grosso.

"I have gotten to know her during this trial. She is intelligent, sweet, and yes, a bit naive. She didn't cry to get your attention. She's like that. She's genuine, and I think she has shown great dignity through all of this."

Sollecito also defended her, saying he thought it was difficult to imagine that she was the maneater the prosecution depicted. He added that he did not feel dominated by her.

"I am not a dog on a leash, and I am not Amanda-dependent as the prosecution has argued."

Defense lawyers for Knox and Sollecito have spiritedly given it their all in the closing phase of this closely watched international trial. In rebuttal arguments Thursday, they again challenged the validity of the wide range of scientific and circumstantial evidence presented by Perugia prosecutors.

More than 100 witnesses testified and twice that many pieces of physical evidence were introduced over the course of nearly 50 hearings held twice a week since last January.

Prosecutors allege that Knox, Sollecito and a third suspect, Ivory Coast immigrant Rudy Guede, sexually molested and killed Kercher after a fight born of Knox's loathing for Kercher spiraled out of control.

Knox and Sollecito later returned to stage a burglary and ****, they maintain. Guede was convicted for his part in the slaying and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He is appealing.

Deanna Knox   
Zoom   Getty Images   
Deanna Knox, the sister of Amanda Knox reacts during the trial. (Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images)   
Prosecutors and the attorneys for Meredith Kercher's family pleaded with jurors to sentence Knox and Sollecito to life in prison, asserting that that they were all present at the scene of the crime and vigorously defending the forensic evidence and theory of the crimes presented in their recent closing arguments.

"Meredith Kercher was killed because she knew all three of her attackers," said Francesco Maresca., the Kercher family attorney. "She died because after having been attacked, threatened and sexually assaulted they had to silence her in some way, and you get that silence only with death."

The case is expected to go to the jury made up of two magistrates and six laypersons Friday morning.

The jurors' decision -- called a sentence, not a verdict in Italian -- will be made by majority rule. Dissenting opinions will not be made public. An official explanation for their opinion must be rendered in the next 90 days.

If they acquit, Knox will be able to get her belongings from prison and begin making arrangements to go home immediately. If they convict, they have a wide range of flexibility on how many years of prison to require, based on a variety of extenuating circumstances. They can also set compensation.
Andrea Vogt is a freelance journalist working in Italy. She can be reached at andrea@thefreelancedesk.com.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/412871_knox03.html?source=mypi

[Manutius]

Don't be fooled. This is a treacherous and murderous girl. Glad she is behind bars.

[Jenna Bluehut]

melinda-henneberger
Melinda Henneberger
Amanda Knox: 'She-Devil' or Victim of Anti-Americanism?
Posted:
12/6/09



Perugia is quite a beautiful Umbrian college town, birthplace of Perugino – duh – and home to Pinturicchio. It's where they make those little individually wrapped chocolates called "Baci,'' which means "kisses" in Italian. Just like bubble gum that comes wrapped in a comic, every candy comes wrapped in a smoochy quote. I bought my husband his wedding ring there, on our honeymoon, which is a whole other story.
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But Perugia is also, alas, where a 21-year-old British student named Meredith Kercher was brutally murdered in 2007, a crime for which Kercher's young American roommate, Amanda Knox of Seattle, was convicted and sentenced to 26 years in prison on Saturday.

There is little to no physical evidence linking Knox to the murder, and much to suggest that she's really only in jail because Italian authorities didn't want to back down and admit that their original theory of the case was bogus. They insist that Kercher was killed in a kinky sexual "misadventure'' with Knox, her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and a drifter, Rudy Guede, who has confessed to the crime. In court, Knox was painted as a **** and referred to as a "little she-devil.'' In court, they asked jurors to consider imagined dialogue between the victim and her killers.

[Jenna Bluehut]

Italian prosecutors have a history of corruption – and more recently, of fighting corruption -- and are regularly accused of pursuing various political agendas. While I was living in Italy as a reporter for the New York Times, I had exactly two dealings with prosecutors. The first was for a story involving a prosecutor for Milan whose office was trying to pursue terror suspects after 9/11. I interviewed him over dinner, along with another reporter who had known him for years. We carefully went over what was and was not on the record, but after the story appeared, he called and, for whose benefit I never knew, loudly informed me that we had never met. I found this upsetting, to say the least, but other reporters laughed when I told them what had happened. They always do that, I was told; it's to be expected, and is all part of the deal.
The second story involved a case of homegrown Italian terrorism following a bombing in Rome. A long interview with a prosecutor in that case provided a wealth of information – but so many internal contradictions that I hardly knew what to do with it. Attempts to clarify even the basics seemed to confuse the man I was interviewing, who eventually asked me what I wanted the story to say. People take news in Italy with more than a grain of salt, my colleagues patiently told me. A lot of it is widely understood to be theatre.

[Jenna Bluehut]

Have these two experiences left me with a bias about the Italian justice system? Absolutely. But I think it would be hard to argue that the six members of the Knox jury who came to court draped, literally, in the colors of the Italian flag, were unbiased arbiters of the facts of the case. The sensational coverage of the crime would have necessitated a change of venue in the United States, where Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) issued a statement after the verdict yesterday:
"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. Italian jurors were not sequestered and were allowed to view highly negative news coverage about Ms. Knox. Other flaws in the Italian justice system on display in this case included the harsh treatment of Ms. Knox following her arrest; negligent handling of evidence by investigators; and pending charges of misconduct against one of the prosecutors stemming from another murder trial. I am in contact with the U.S. Ambassador to Italy and have been since the time of Ms. Knox's arrest. I will be conveying my concerns to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.''
Clinton would seem to be the perfect person to make sure that a young American woman isn't railroaded on account of her nationality and what those who know Knox see as made-up gossip about her sexuality. Yet when asked about the case Sunday morning by George Stephanopoulos, she said, "George, I honestly haven't had time to even examine that. I've been immersed in what we're doing in Afghanistan...I can't offer any opinion.''
That is especially disappointing given that Knox is only a few years younger than Chelsea Clinton. I hope the secretary of state will reconsider and find time in her schedule to look into the case.

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/12/06/amanda-knox-she-devil-or-victim-of-anti-americanism/

[Jenna Bluehut]

I think she was railroaded!  They have a crummy justice system over there and they don't like Americans,

[Jennifer O'Dell]

Yeah, I think she was innocent, too.  They didn't even find any fingerprints linking her to the crime, or any witnesses.

[Keith Ranville]

I think Italy has the most hanging judicial system in the world you can thank the mafia for this system the italian law is putting out a message to the world "we do not mess around" A I am sorry this girl is a victim of there harsh law circumstances. Because it wasn't to long ago that they put one of the biggest mafia familys in the klink.. many of the mafia members were guilty just by association? and were perhaps innocent if were judged in north american courts? 

If you ask me if they let her go, then they will have to release others in similar circumstances! 

This reminds me of that spaghetti western "hang em' high"

I would bet there tourism will drop soon?

[Jenna Bluehut]

Lesson being: don't go to a foreign country where they can just lock you up without due process!

[Keith Ranville]

That's why when I was out in mexico on occasions I was on my best behavior as a canadian tourist, lucky for me I blended in with the natives