Amanda Knox is free

And wow, my blog stats told me, long before I even turned on the news!

As I have said before, every time there is news about Amanda, I get lots of hits on her old MySpace photo (at left), as well as my stories about the case.

So, to make it easy, here is a recap:

The Murder of Meredith Kercher, November 8, 2007 (intro to the case, not many facts, some now known to be incorrect)

The Murder of Meredith Kercher, pt 2, November 14, 2007 (all the dirty details, linkage)

Amanda Knox found guilty, December 5, 2009 (a bit of a brawl in comments on the trial)

Amanda Knox's parents sued, February 15, 2011 (self-explanatory)

Welcome home, Amanda... and if you decide to write any more dirty stories on MySpace, be sure to use a pseudonym this time.

Amanda Knox's parents sued

I always know when there's a new Amanda Knox update, because I get bunches of hits on her old MySpace photo (left). I don't even need Google alerts!

Today, Knox's parents (Curt Knox and Edda Mellas) were sued for libel by Italian police. Say what?! (I didn't even know you could do that.):

The unusual charge against the US couple stems from an interview they gave to the Sunday Times three years ago, in which they alleged that she had been physically and verbally mistreated during questioning after [Meredith] Kercher's murder in 2007. The police denied harming Knox.

Curt Knox and his wife, Edda Mellas, were charged in their absence by a court in Perugia . They are scheduled to stand trail on 4 July.

A repesentative of the Knox family said there would be no comment on the development.

Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted in 2009 of sexually assaulting and murdering Kercher in the cottage the two women shared in Perugia. Kercher was found semi-naked, with her throat slashed.

Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison, and Sollecito to 25 years. Both deny wrongdoing, and their appeal against conviction has begun.

As I have written before (see above links), I think there is an even chance that Knox is guilty, but of course, could never be convicted in a US courtroom, where evidence is required. In Italy? Apparently not. There seems to be no forensic evidence whatsoever.

After reading that several jurors showed up in court wearing Italian flags (in anti-American sentiment), I was floored. In the USA, that alone would be enough for a mistrial. In Italy? Apparently not.

Anyway, now her parents are not allowed to trash the cops, another American pastime I totally took for granted:

The Italian court was told, according to the Italian news agency ANSA, that "they said, contrary to the truth, that Amanda had not been assisted by an interpreter, that she hadn't been given food or water, that she had been abused both physically and verbally", and "that she had been slapped on the back of the head and threatened".

Libel is a criminal charge in Italy, and carries a sentence of six months to three years, as well as a fine.

This is what they call a judicial system? Maybe in the Vatican, but not in the days of FORENSIC FILES, okay?

Italia, be ashamed, be very ashamed.

~*~

Comments welcome, but be advised: No nastiness on this thread, or its the trap-door for you. I put up with a lot of crap from the peanut gallery when I first started blogging (again, check the threads), but I don't now. Anti-Amanda misogynists and/or anti-American Italians, take heed.

Amanda Knox found guilty

I decided some time ago, not to write about the Amanda Knox case again until there was a verdict. (I first covered the murder of Meredith Kercher when it originally happened, here and here.) I still get plenty of hits on her old MySpace photo (left), virtually every time she is mentioned on TV. Yesterday, while awaiting the verdict, lots of hits on the photo.



Guilty:

Perugia, Italy (CNN) -- An Italian jury has found American student Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito guilty in the stabbing death of British exchange student Meredith Kercher.

Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison and Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years.

Both were convicted on all charges except theft and together must pay 5 million euros ($7.4 million) to the victim's family. In addition, Knox must pay 40,000 euros ($60,000) to a man whom she falsely accused of the killing.

Knox, wearing a lime jacket, her hair in a single braid, began to sob -- her sniffles and sobs punctuating the otherwise silent courtroom -- as the judge read the verdict quietly, without expression.

Few of the eight jurors looked at her. Six of the jurors were wearing red, white and green sashes -- the colors of Italy's flag.

Sollecito's stepmother cried out her stepson's name twice as he and Knox were led from the court.

Curt Knox, Amanda Knox's father, walked the four blocks from the courtroom to his hotel staring stonily ahead, holding his two tearful daughters by the hand.

He said nothing as they strode through the streets of the medieval town except "Move," when journalists got in his way.

"We are extremely disappointed in the verdict rendered today against our daughter," Knox's family said in a statement.

"While we always knew this was a possibility, we find it difficult to accept this verdict when we know that she is innocent, and that the prosecution has failed to explain why there is no evidence of Amanda in the room where Meredith was so horribly and tragically murdered.

"It appears clear to us that the attacks on Amanda's character in much of the media and by the prosecution had a significant impact on the judges and jurors and apparently overshadowed the lack of evidence in the prosecution's case against her."

Knox and Sollecito will appeal the verdicts, attorneys said.

After the verdict, Knox's lawyer, Carlo Della Vedova said his client was upset, but strong.

He would not speculate on the reason for the verdict.

"We have to see the motivation," he said, referring to legal paperwork the judge must file within 90 days to explain the jury's reasoning.

Her family was disappointed, but not surprised, by the verdict, Knox's aunt Janet Huff told CNN.com

"It was terrible, it was gut-wrenching just to hear them say it," said Huff, speaking from her Seattle, Washington, home.

"And to see the people outside the courtroom applauding -- that just made me sick that people can be that callous and cold."

Knox and Sollecito were charged with murder and sexual violence in the November 2007 stabbing death of Meredith Kercher. Knox and Kercher, both studying abroad, were roommates. A third suspect was found guilty in a separate trial.

Prosecutors argued Seattle, Washington, native Amanda Knox was a resentful American so angry with her British roommate that she exacted revenge during a twisted sex misadventure at their home two years ago.

They said Knox directed Sollecito and another man infatuated with her, Rudy Guede, to hold Kercher down as Knox played with a knife before slashing Kercher's throat.

Defense lawyers argued that Guede, who was convicted in a separate fast-track trial and is currently appealing his conviction, was the sole killer. On Thursday, Knox took the stand for a third time in the Perugia courtroom, telling jurors that she is not a "killer" who stabbed her former roommate.

"They say that I am calm. I am not calm," Knox said in Italian. "I fear to lose myself, to have the mask of the killer forced upon me. I fear to be defined as someone I am not."

Prosecutors touted an airtight case.

They argued DNA on Kercher's bra clasp belonged to Sollecito. And the alleged murder weapon, a 6 ½-inch kitchen knife taken from Sollecito's home, had the DNA of Knox on the handle and Kercher on the blade, prosecutors said.

During the trial, the defense sought to cast doubt on the knife evidence, arguing it doesn't match the wounds on Kercher's body.

And they said the bra clasp with Sollecito's DNA on it was left at the crime scene for weeks and is so contaminated that the evidence can't be considered credible.

Knox's family has argued she has been the victim of character assassination.

Members of Kercher's family have declined repeated CNN requests for comment.

Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini accused the defense of "lynching" the Italian police who worked on the case.

Knox and Sollecito have been jailed for more than two years. The trial began in January in Perugia, a university town about 115 miles (185 kilometers) north of Rome.

I am really quite surprised. You could NEVER get that verdict here in the USA with the flimsy physical evidence and overall compromise of the crime scene. Not to mention, the tainting of the jury pool.

And of course, there is also the simple, very unjust fact that she has been jailed since she was charged. She has not been able to fully participate in her own defense. English, not Italian, is her first language. No Miranda reading and no Bill of Rights in Italy. I am reminded, again, why it is so crucial.

Mr Daisy and I started talking about the fact that Amanda, who is likely guilty (I have to admit, I don't know, but the initial facts looked pretty bad), could never get a guilty verdict here in the USA, but got one in Italy. What does that mean? Is our justice system TOO one-sided in favor of defendants, as many right-wing politicians and victim-advocates have claimed? I have always been proud of our "innocent until proven guilty" concept--but of course, this obviously means that lots of guilty people have gone free, who should not have.

And the reverse is true, without the presumption of innocence: Innocent people are accused and no substantial evidence is required.

There is no perfect judicial system, but I used to believe the American system was superior. After encountering the entire True Crime/Ann Rule oeuvre, I changed my mind: money talks and bullshit walks. T. Cullen Davis, evil bloodthirsty killer of a 12-year-old child at point-blank range, is a free man... not coincidentally, he is also the richest man ever tried for murder. (No millionaire has ever received the death penalty in this country, and none ever will.) I no longer subscribe to the idea that our judicial system is automatically superior; but is it the best we can expect?

The Knox verdict has me wondering about fairness. Do we bend over backwards to protect defendants?

And what if she is innocent? Her inability to get a fair trial in a sensationalistic media-circus atmosphere is certainly a factor against her.

What do you think?

The Murder of Meredith Kercher, pt 2

Left: Amanda Knox on her MySpace page, as reprinted in the UK Telegraph.



A couple of days ago, my blog stats when BOOM again* all because people are DYING to know about the Meredith Kercher/Amanda Knox murder case. Nobody seems to be Googling the guys' names... people want the lesbian-tinged, sadomasochistic, play-by-play action. As naive as this sounds, I really didn't think I'd get 300 hits in 48 hours, all due to searches like "Kercher Knox rough sex murder" (there! I made it easy for yall!)... so now, it's time for some feminist analysis, if I can manage it.

The fact is: I think this case may be out of my depth. Where to start?

I've asked some people who are genuinely into "rough sex" (obviously one of those eye-of-the-beholder things; rough sex for one person will not necessarily be rough to another) if they might contribute or comment on this case for me, and they seem thoroughly disinclined to do so. I totally understand that, since they should not have to answer for an isolated SM crackpot on the loose, but I am still curious about what they think of the press coverage so far. Fox News and various other news outlets can hardly stop leering long enough to focus on the facts of the case, try as they might. How often do you have free-wheelin American girls from Seattle running amok in Italy, forcing "rough sex" on nice, proper British girls? And bringing in Italian boyfriends and Congolese bar-owners to participate in the fun? Good lord. That's enough for a movie all by itself.

And... did the whole thing just get out of hand, or was Meredith's torture-death the intention from the git-go?

What really sets this case apart is the fact that Amanda had an ongoing narrative, as FOXY KNOXY--a MySpace blogger who openly wrote about BDSM scenarios and had something of a fan-base. One wonders if this case would keep us so enthralled if this pre-conceived character did not already exist, as the Columbine boys also had online personas that dovetailed with their real-life intentions. The Telegraph puts it very plainly, titling their update: AMANDA KNOX WROTE STORIES ABOUT RAPE (all that's required is an exclamation point, or several):

Amanda Knox, a 20-year-old language and creative writing student from Seattle in the United States, wrote enthusiastically on the social networking site MySpace about her new life studying Italian in Perugia, about her friends and her new house.

Like most people of her age, her tastes are diverse and she rambles about the people she loves and the ways she likes to spend her time.

But Knox, writing under the name Foxy Knoxy, also reveals a different side to her character with a series of short stories - one concerns a stalker and another talks about the drugging and rape of a young woman.

In the latter, an older brother Edgar, challenges his younger brother Kyle over a woman called Victoria.

His brother responds, laughing: "Icky Vicky, huh? Jeez, Edgar. You had me going there. A thing you have to know about chicks is that they don't know what they want," before attacking him.

Detectives currently questioning Knox are expected to trawl through the blogs, and every element of her life, in the coming days, looking for any clues as to how an average young woman at the beginning one of the most exciting periods of her life might have been caught up in murderous sexual violence.

It was Knox and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, who claim to have first found Meredith Kercher's body at the house the two girls shared.

Knox gave an alibi to police but in the four days after the killing, it allegedly began to crumble.

She last logged onto her MySpace page on Monday - four days after the killing, but will not have seen messages of support posted by friends telling her they love her and to "stay strong".

Before this week's events, she corresponded regularly with friends and family back home, telling them "I still miss those people I love".

Of her new life in Europe, the primary school teacher's daughter wrote in a blog on October 15: "I've actually been living in Italy for about a month now and I've had classes for two weeks so far. Everything is going great.

"I really like the Italian lifestyle. everything shuts down in the middle of the day so everyone can have a three hour lunch break. I love it. I wish we had that in America.

"I think Americans work too much and don't live. Having that time in the middle of the day reminds you that life really isn't all about going to work and making money.

"It's about who you are and what you choose to do and who you choose to spend your time with."

She also refers to the man who is suspected of carrying out the killing with her, Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba.

"I've been working every night (except for Monday night) from 10pm to 2.30am at a bar called Le Chic. It's a really small place owned by this man from the Congo. His name is Patrick," she wrote.

She makes no mention of Sollecito in her profile.

She is however chided by her aunt - who is unnamed on MySpace- for having a picture of an apparently naked man called Federico on her page.

Her aunt warned her: "Do not get naked with strange Italian men!!” Knox replied that Federico was just a friend.

Under "marital status", she wrote "single", listed her mother under "heroes" and under "children", wrote: "someday".

She wrote: "I love things like good wine, rock climbing, backpacking long distances with people I love, yoga on a rainy day, making coffee, drinking tea, and lots of languages".

"I’m 20 years old and I like new things. Ooh, and soccer, and roller coasters, and Harry Potter, and..."

Last night, her parents insisted there had been a "horrible mistake" and that she was innocent.

Her stepmother Cassandra Knox, 45, said from her home in Seattle: "I just don't believe a word of it. I just can't imagine there is any truth in it at all."

She added of Knox's father William, 47: "He is in a state of utter shock and disbelief. There's no way she could have done it, it’s all a horrible mistake."

Knox's mother, Edda, 45, was said to be flying out to Italy today.

(Left: Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, from ABC News.)





What frightens many bloggers, is how Amanda's blog is now being used as evidence.

Moral of the story: Fantasies we write about may one day bite us in the ass, so be careful. For example, if I should write that a certain person makes me sick and I wish they would die, and they end up dead under questionable circumstances, does that automatically make me a suspect? (And if so, is that fair?)

If your roommate ends up raped and murdered and you have written fantasies on your blog about rape and murder, well, talk about some bad luck, huh?

Monica Guzman, at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, asks some of these questions:

If there is a unwritten Law of Internet Privacy, it is this: Anything you post can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion.

Take Amanda M. Knox, the University of Washington student whose alleged involvement in the killing of British exchange student Meredith Kercher has set the media and the public on an online manhunt for every shred of Knox's online presence, with those aspects that paint her as the circumstances do -- as a drunk, misbehaving bad girl -- rising to the top.

Forget "you have the right to remain silent." Amanda is a child of the social Web. She may not have ever had a choice.

And for someone heavily involved in a murder investigation, "public opinion" isn't the half of it. Dan Gonsiorowski of Seattlest commented this morning:

From the papers in Europe, and particularly in England, you'd think that UW student Amanda Knox had already been tried and convicted of sexually assaulting and killing her roommate Meredith Kercher in Perguia, Italy. ... The English media has already dug up plenty of evidence from the detritus a student leaves on the Internet in the course of a modern life.

Gonsiorowski doesn't use the word "evidence" literally. But he points out that all these things -- the MySpace profile, the Facebook self-descriptions, the YouTube video [Now removed--DD] that under different circumstances would be laughed off as typical college debauchery -- are, in fact, playing the role of evidence online. The boost of legitimacy comes from several media outlets for which the Internet is just as open and easy a source of information as it is for everybody else.

It may be easy. But is it fair? Are we, the media, and we, the public, presenting personal information posted on the You Tube and MySpace world -- with which we have only a couple of years' experience -- as responsibly as we should?

It should be noted that Knox's statement to police, as reported in the Times UK (she describes being in the room next to where Kercher was killed, hearing her screams but doing little about them), and the fact that this was the second story she told police remain the most damning pieces of evidence against her.

Still, statements she made to the world before she knew we'd be listening are having an impact. This morning I asked the Big Blog's official Facebook group how (and if) we can ensure that personal information posted online -- which has become such a goldmine of quick, juicy information -- is viewed so that fairness rises above assumption. Most agreed that there is no shame in distributing information that is already public when events call for it. But they also expressed concern that online "evidence" can be taken too far, and that the conclusions inferred from it can do more harm than good.

On Knox's MySpace profile today, friends have left messages of consolation and offers to help. "I believe in you," said one commenter. "Stay strong," another said.

What do you think?

P.S. -- About that YouTube video, which was made remarkably, almost ridiculously prominent in this Daily Mail article ...

The most common way we avoid our responsibility as online viewers is to pin it all on the online creators. There are good reasons for this, but they get weak as online profiles become more entrenched in our social lives.

It is true that no one's forcing anyone to share themselves online. It is also true that many people who do share parts of their lives choose to leave out the drunk parts. That doesn't mean they don't happen.

Clearly, something in Knox's personality made her feel comfortable enough posting that video. But that scene was something I saw in college every week. Does Knox's choice to post the video excuse us from placing it in its appropriate context?

Context? Like, getting drunk and going apeshit?

That kind of context hurts, rather than helps, which is sorta the point.

And so, the tabloid-story-of-the-season (the year?) rages on. The truth, as usual, is wrapped up somewhere in the media-mess. For everyone's sake, let's hope we get it.


*Comparatively speaking, that is! I usually don't get much traffic, which is why that kinda blew my mind.

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Listening to: Grateful Dead - I Know You Rider
via FoxyTunes

The Murder of Meredith Kercher

Left: Meredith Kercher.

Something is way hinky about the tabloid event of the season, the murder of Meredith Kercher. Meredith's roommate, Amanda Knox (now in custody), supposedly demanded "violent sex"--a guaranteed hot murder story. Add to that the alleged involvement of Amanda's boyfriend and another male friend from the Congo (that is to say, black) and you have all the ingredients for a 2-part CSI episode. From Sky News:

Murdered Meredith 'Refused Violent Sex'

Tuesday November 06, 2007

British exchange student Meredith Kercher was murdered because she refused to take part in violent sex, Italian police have claimed.

Officers spoke out following the arrest of the victim's flatmate Amanda Knox, 20 - and two men - after she reportedly broke down under interrogation.

She is said to have revealed more information about the death.

The three in custody are all suspected of conspiracy to commit manslaughter and to commit sexual violence.

They were seized in raids in Perugia early this morning.

Miss Kercher's body was found last Friday in her bedroom at the house she shared with Knox and two others on the Viale Sant'Angelo, not far from the city centre.

The Leeds University student, 21, from Coulsdon, south London, was partially clothed and her throat had been cut.

Italian news agency Ansa named the other two suspects as Italian student Rafaelle Sollecito, 24 - who is believed to be Knox's boyfriend - and Lumumba Diya, 37, from the Congo.

Sollecito was thought to be finishing his degree in the city and Diya, who is also known by the name Patrick, had been in the country since 1988 and had a regular work permit. Meredith had been learning Italian.

Detectives earlier confirmed fears that Miss Kercher appeared to have been killed when a sexual encounter went horrifically wrong.

Perugia's police chief Arturo De Felice told reporters the student had died fighting off a sexual attack.

He refused to elaborate further on the circumstances of her death but stressed that she was "morally innocent" and was a "victim and nothing more".

Miss Kercher, who arrived in Italy at the end of August as part of a one-year Erasmus programme, is thought to have died after being stabbed with a pocket knife.

A post-mortem test revealed there was evidence of sexual activity before her death, although medical examiners did not confirm suggestions that she had been raped.

The Times Online UK, offers more salacious details:

Meredith Kercher, the British student murdered in Perugia, was worried by the "strange men" her American housemate Amanda Knox brought back to their cottage, according to police evidence.

The emerging picture of Ms Knox's lifestyle in Italy is at odds with her reputation in the United States as a clean cut student, though not with some of the darker fantasies of her blog, in which she called herself "Foxy Knoxy" and wrote a story in which she imagined a drugged girl being killed.

In evidence to the police, Sophie Purton, 20, a close friend of the dead girl, said that Ms Kercher had told her that Ms Knox "had brought men back to the house several times, I don't know how many". She said Ms Kercher told her Ms Knox met the men in bars or internet cafes, and they included at least one "very strange type".

Hours before her death Ms Kercher watched a film at Ms Purton's home before walking back to the whitewashed hillside cottage she shared with Ms Knox and two Italian women. Ms Purton, who is not a suspect, told police she thought her account of Ms Kercher's anxieties over the men Ms Knox allegedly brought back might be "important".

The Perugia police chief Arturo De Felice has said Ms Kercher died fighting off a sexual attack. Ms Knox has accused Patrick Diya Lumumba, a 37 year old bar owner and musician, of the murder, and has claimed she does not remember whether Raffaele Sollecito, her Italian boyfriend, was also at the house.

In earlier testimony she had denied being at the house herself, and Mr Sollecito claimed they had been together elsewhere. But she later changed her story, telling investigators she had heard screaming from Ms Kercher's bedroom while Mr Lumumba was in it but stopped up her ears.

Police continue to suspect that Ms Knox was not only present at the house but took part in the murder, perhaps holding the victim down while she was sexually attacked. "All eyes are on the Dark Lady of Seattle," said La Stampa.

Ms Purton's revelation is one of several transcripts of police interrogations leaked to the Italian press. It was published by La Stampa and Corriere della Sera.

Ms Knox, Mr Sollecito, a computer science student, and Mr Lumumba, a Congolese immigrant, all appeared at a hearing today to confirm their continued detention on suspicion of involvement in murder and sexual violence. They were arrested on Tuesday.

Ms Kercher, 21, was found dead and semi naked in her bedroom last Friday. She was in Perugia studying Italian as part of her European Studies degree at Leeds University and arrived in August. Police have said she was "morally upright", suggesting she did not take part in the hidden drink and drugs culture of Perugia.

In an extraordinary twist Patrick Diya Lumumba not only denied today that he had murdered Meredith Kercher but claimed he had not even been in her house.

After lengthy questioning of the three suspects by Claudia Matteini, the investigating judge, Mr Lumumba's lawyers Carlo Pacelli and Giuseppe Sereni said their client had "an alibi".

"He was never in the house of horrors, and he can prove it," Mr Pacelli told reporters. "Our client has slept well because he believes in justice."

He added: "We have witnesses and documents which prove that our client was not there."

Mr Lumumba admitted to the judge that he knew Ms Kercher and had met her a month before her death. "I met her a couple of times," he said.

This however contradicts his claim at the time of his arrest that he did not know her at all.

Read the rest of the story.

~*~

EDIT: Also see my second, more detailed entry: MURDER OF MEREDITH KERCHER, PART TWO

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Listening to: Rancid - Lock, Step & Gone
via FoxyTunes