compiled by Patrick H. Moore
Amanda Knox will not be returning to Italy to attend a new appeals trial over the 2007 killing of her former British roommate, Meredith Kercher. The trial is set to start in Florence, Italy on September 30th.
The 25-year-old spent four years in prison after being convicted of Meredith Kercher’s murder in Perugia, Italy, where they were roommates while studying abroad.
An Italian appeals court threw out Knox’s murder conviction in 2011. In March, however, the Italian Supreme Court rejected the Appeals Court ruling and ordered a new trial for Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 29.
The Supreme Court’s reasoning, as set forth in a 74-page document, indicates that the Supreme Court judges supported the prosecutors’ original theory that Kercher possibly died during a forced “erotic game” that got violent. The sex game gone wrong theory was initially suggested by the prosecutors, but the motive later evolved during the trial into antagomism between the women because Knox allegedly brought boys home late at night and was sloppy and loud. In addition, Kercher allegedly accused her of stealing money.
The judges’ document mentioned looking at a “wide range of possible hypothetical options,” including “the change in a program which at first only included the involvement of the English young woman in a sex game which she didn’t share, to exclusively forcing her into a group kinky erotic game, which exploded, getting out of control.”
In April, Knox told ABC News’ Diane Sawyer that the Supreme Court’s decision to order a third trial was “incredibly painful.”
“I felt like after crawling through a field of barbed wire and finally reaching what I thought was the end, it just turned out that it was the horizon,” Knox said. “And I had another field of barbed wire that I had ahead of me to crawl through.”
Knox does not have to return to Italy for the trial, and extradition is not currently on the table.
A Short History of Amanda Knox and Her Trial
Amanda Knox grew up in West Seattle. After high school, she began studies at the University of Washington in 2005.
In 2007, Knox moved to Perugia, Italy, to study Italian, German, and creative writing at the University for Foreigners for one year. She shared a house with Meredith Kercher, a student from England, as well as two Italian women. In mid-October 2007 she began a romantic relationship with an Italian engineering student, Raffaele Sollecito. Knox’s friends saw her as energetic, athletic, and kind, a pacifist hippie who loved making cakes and jam, doing yoga, playing soccer and guitar, rock climbing and cycling. According to one source, while Knox appeared to be a confident young woman, she was known by friends and family to be averse to any kind of conflict, and believed in the importance of positive thinking. She had grown in recent years into an attractive woman, and had become a compulsive diarist. All these traits — including her bubbly personality and tendency to practice yoga stretches at inappropriate times — contributed to her downfall in Perugia, making her more reticent flatmates critical of her, and the police suspicious.
On November 1, 2007, Meredith Kercher, aged 21, was found dead on the floor of her bedroom with stab wounds to the throat. Some of her belongings were missing, including cash, two credit cards, two mobile phones, and her house keys. On November 6, 2007, Knox was arrested by the Italian police and, along with Sollecito, charged with the murder of Kercher. She spent the next four years at the Capanne prison in Perugia. In 2009, Knox and Sollecito were convicted of sexual assault, murder and simulating a burglary at the first level (primo grado) of trial. According to Italian law, however, she would not be considered guilty until the verdict was confirmed by higher courts. During her appeal at the second level (secondo grado) of trial, which concluded on October 3, 2011, the original conviction was overturned; she was found innocent of the murder and she was released from prison. However, on March 26, 2013, the Italian Court of Cassation overturned Knox’s acquittal and ordered a retrial at an appellate court in Florence.
Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast native raised in Perugia, was also charged with sexually assaulting and murdering Kercher. He opted for a fast track trial and was convicted in October 2008. Guede is currently serving a 16-year sentence.
Slander upon Slander
In addition to the murder investigation, this case has been awash with damages. Knox was ordered to pay Patrick Lumumba, the man she originally accused of murdering Kercher, €10,000 in restitution as a result of her conviction for calunnia (slander) and €40,000 as compensation for Lumumba’s legal expenses. The conviction was upheld by the appeals court and Knox was sentenced to three years imprisonment (which she had already completed while awaiting trial), and ordered to pay an additional €22,000.
Knox, however, prevailed in her legal action against Fiorenza Sarzanini, the author of Amanda e gli altri (“Amanda and the Others”), a best-selling book about her that had been published in Italy. The book included events as imagined or invented by Sarzanini, witness transcripts not in the public domain, long excerpts from Knox’s private journals, which Sarzanini had somehow obtained, and intimate details professing to describe Knox’s sex life. Knox’s lawyers said that the book had “reported in a prurient manner, aimed solely at arousing the morbid imagination of readers.” According to U.S. legal commentator Kendal Coffrey, “In this country we would say, with this kind of media exposure, you could not get a fair trial”. In March 2010, Knox won her civil case against Sarzanini and her publisher for violation of her privacy and illegal publication of court documents. She was awarded €40,000 in damages.
A second case for calunnia was brought against Knox on June 1, 2010, for allegedly falsely implicating police. Knox has claimed she had been slapped and put under pressure by police while being questioned in the aftermath of Kercher’s murder. She stated that police repeatedly called her a “stupid liar”. Police denied misconduct and filed charges saying Knox’s comments were slanderous.
In February 2011, Knox’s parents, Curt Knox and Edda Mellas, were indicted on charges of criminal slander as a result of an interview published by The Sunday Times in 2009, in which they said their daughter “had not been given an interpreter, had not received food and water, and had been physically and verbally abused” by police officers after her arrest. They sought to have the charges dismissed on the grounds that there was no intent.
After Knox was acquitted of the murder, several media outlets reported that Kercher’s family were suing her for $12 million. Kercher’s family have stated that the reports are incorrect and that they do not believe anyone should profit from the murder.
Prison life
Knox spent almost four years in jail while she waited for her first trial and appealed the initial verdict. As might be expected, she did not have an easy time of it. She was given an initial blood test and then told that she was HIV positive; this later turned out to be untrue. Officials insisted she write a list of previous lovers, which they leaked to the media.
Knox has stated that during her time in prison she was sexually harassed and intimidated by prison officials. Knox reports that a high-ranking prison administrator would take her to his office alone at night and make inappropriate statements, which left her feeling terrified. Furthermore, prison guards forced her to engage in unwanted sexual conversations. ABC News reported that one male guard entered Knox’s cell alone and made sexual remarks to her.
Support for Knox
In late 2008, a number of Seattle-area residents, including lawyer Anne Bremner, founded the “Friends of Amanda”, a support group to raise money and awareness. Maria Cantwell, United States Senator for Washington, issued a statement on December 4, 2009, that the evidence against Knox was inadequate, that she had been subjected to harsh treatment after her arrest, and that there had been negligence in the handling of the evidence. The Idaho Innocence Project, a non-profit investigative organization dedicated to proving the innocence of wrongly convicted people through the use of DNA testing, volunteered to work for the Knox defense. On May 23, 2011, Dr. Gregory Hampikian, director of the project, announced that, based on its independent investigation and review, DNA samples taken at the crime scene all pointed to African drifter Rudy Guede and excluded Knox and Sollecito.
On May 26, 2011, 11 members of the Italian parliament got into the “defend Amanda” act. Led by Rocco Girlanda and all members of The People of Freedom Party founded by, of all people, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the group issued a document as an act of parliament addressed to Justice Minister Angelino Alfano. The document criticized the evidence that resulted in the Knox/Sollecito guilty verdicts, and the extended detention to which they were subject. Girlanda also addressed a letter to President Giorgio Napolitano, in Girlanda’s capacity as president of the Italy–USA Foundation, in which he wrote:
“These distortions, not without reason, are fuelling accusations against the administration of justice in our country.”
According to Corrado Maria Daclon, secretary general of the Italy–USA Foundation, when Knox returned to her former prison after her appeal, “[a]ll the prisoners, 500 or 600 of them, started to greet Amanda from the windows, like soccer stardom.” She then said goodbye to her cellmate, other prisoners, and some of the guards. The next day she flew home to Seattle. Upon her arrival, Knox gave a brief press conference in which she thanked those who had supported her and her family.
Knox wrote a letter to Corrado Maria Daclon the day after regaining her freedom:
“To hold my hand and offer support and respect throughout the obstacles and the controversy, there were Italians. There was the Italy–USA Foundation, and many others that shared my pain and that helped me survive, with hope. I am eternally grateful for their caring hospitality and their courageous commitment. To those that wrote me, that defended me, that stood by me, that prayed for me… I am forever grateful to you.”
Public Image/Media Projects
In June 2009, owing to all her televised court hearings, an Italian television poll listed Amanda Knox as a bigger personality than Carla Bruni. Barbara Walters named her as one of the ten most fascinating people of 2011.
In February 2011, Lifetime, an American television network, produced a television film about the case, titled Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy. It focused on Knox, who was played by American actress Hayden Panettiere. Kercher was played by the British actress Amanda Fernando Stevens. The Kercher family condemned the film and described its images as “horrific and distressing”. Before the film was broadcast, lawyers for both Knox and Sollecito formally demanded that Lifetime abandon the production.
In December 2011, Knox secured the services of Washington, D.C. lawyer Robert Barnett to negotiate an official book deal. On February 16, 2012, HarperCollins announced that Knox had signed with them to write her memoir in a deal that will pay her $4 million. The memoir, titled Waiting to be Heard, was released on April 30, 2013. According to The New York Times, the book lays out Knox’s version of what happened the night of the murder, describes her life in prison, and her return to life outside prison.