Amanda Knox, convicted for the murder of Meredith Kercher, began her 26-year sentence this weekend, and she’s taking it pretty hard. On December 4, 2009, both she and former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were found guilty of murder, sexual violence, and all other counts except theft. Knox’s parents have immediately begun the process of appealing against the verdict.
Amanda Knox
Knox, 20 at the time of the murder, and Kercher were students in a university exchange program. The morning of November 1, 2007, Italian Postal and Communication Police found two cell phones in a garden flanking the house where Kercher lived with Knox. They found Kercher (the owner of both phones) lying half-naked in a pool of blood in her locked bedroom. Three days later, investigators sought out Knox and Sollecito for questioning, and found them casually eating pizza. Fellow exchange students pegged “strange” behavior the day Kercher’s body was found and at the police station, including accounts that Knox and Sollecito were laughing, kissing, and cuddling. Apparently, prosecutors used reference to this “strange” behavior and other vague concepts after her roommate’s death as evidence against Knox and Sollecito.
A year later, international media attention on the case has grown and views are more polarized. Knox’s parents claim that anti-American sentiments contributed to the prosecutor’s attacks, and some have called for Obama to step in (much like Bill Clinton did for Laura Ling and Euna Lee, I’m assuming) or for Italy to adopt the American judicial standards. However, since the crime was committed on foreign soil, Amanda was subject to Italian laws and regulations; her status as an American citizen was irrelevant. Not surprising. Take for example, the 1994 case of 18-year-old Michael Fay, convicted of vandalism in Singapore and sentenced to a fine, four months in jail, and painful flogging. Bottom line: Their country, their rules.
During the trial, “Foxy Knoxy” supporters aired their gripes about the Italian judicial system. Anne Bremner, spokeswoman for “Friends of Amanda,” said the Italian media over-dramatized the relationship between Knox and Sollecito. Other criticisms ranged from contaminated evidence and overly fantasized allegations by the prosecution to misleading forensics. Violetta Bellocchio, Italian author and journalist, published her debut novel, Sono io che me ne vado, which discusses how serial killers are invented to attract tourists.
When arrested abroad, U.S. Embassies can lend a helping hand, but for those still begrudging Amanda’s overseas trial, consider this: a British man with Asperger’s syndrome hacked into U.S. computer systems because he was obsessed with finding evidence of UFOs and is being extradited to the U.S. No mention yet of whether the U.S. will adopt the UK legal system for his trial.
Could it be that some Americans got defensive when it came to their own and used Italy’s “antediluvian crime-solving procedures” as a scapegoat for the unsettling implications of Amanda Knox’s crime? The irony is that Amanda was tried in a city where law has been practiced for more than seven centuries, and whose technology and processes are decidedly modern. Italy’s legal system differs from American jurisprudence, but I doubt it could impair Amanda’s chance of getting a fair shake. Can we still believe in the ideal that methods are diverse but justice is universal?
Posted by Rebecca on December 9, 2009 at 10:00 am.
