by Patrick H. Moore
As the impassioned pro-Knox and the anti-Knox partisans await the verdict in the current proceedings (Round III) in Florence, I am struck by several things. First, I wonder if they are suffering from sleep deprivation due to the mounting tension that is escalating as the hearings grind slowly forward. Second, I am cynically amused by a legal system that seems strangely Kafkaesque; i.e., guilt or innocence at any point in the proceedings doesn’t seem to truly matter because whatever the verdict is at the conclusion of one phase, it is liable to be overturned by a higher court, which will in turn be overturned by a still higher court, which will then send it along to another even higher court who will do god knows what. I suppose the case realistically has to end somewhere but to my philosophically trained mind, it all seems an infinite regress of gamesmanship in which the goal is apparently to never reach closure but rather to keep the narrative trickling along.
All of this must be incredibly painful for Meredith Kercher’s family and for Amanda Knox and her family. The fact that the Court only meets occasionally only drags the agony out further and adds to the tension.
All Things Crime Blog has posted three articles by Bondbabe007, an anti-Knoxer and two articles by Pitchforks, a pro-Knoxer. In her posts, Bondbabe carefully interprets the evidence with admirable care with the ultimate goal of demonstrating conclusively that Knox was one of three perpetrators of the murder. The strength of her analysis, right or wrong, is her close and careful reading of what she considers to be the facts. Her impassioned identification with Meredith Kercher is truly heartfelt. One only hopes that the fact she cares so much does not skew her objectivity.
In Pitchforks’ first post, Cooked Pasta Sticks to a Grimy Wall, he makes the case that Italian culture suffers from a need to save face at all costs which inevitably leads to a thoroughgoing corruption that — among other things — negates the integrity of the Italian legal system. In his second post, he performs a close reading in both English and Italian of the fateful text message that Knox sent to Patrick Lumumba on the night of the murder and suggests that the court translator botched the translation in a manner that led the police to wrongly suspect Knox.
Pitchfork’s “in-your-face” style, especially in his first post, has outraged anti-Knoxers who have castigated him in the comments section of All Things Crime Blog. Conversely, the certainty with which Bondbabe works through her anti-Knox arguments has infuriated the pro-Knoxers to an unprecedented degree. She too has been castigated in the comments section.
Both Bondbabe and Pitchforks are very able writers who expend considerable energy in perfecting their craft.
It’s probably fair to say that Bondbabe and Pitchforks epitomize the contrasting views of the two camps. Simply put, they are light years apart. It’s a good thing their communications are done electronically; generally speaking, if pro-Knoxers and anti-Knoxers were to meet face-to-face, it is entirely possible that new murder charges might result.
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The irony of all of this, however, is the fact that if the Italian court ultimately finds Knox guilty of murder (assuming they can reach any verdict and stick to it), in the final analysis it may not matter because the United States could conceivably refuse to extradite Knox.
In March of this year, Barbie Nadeau of CNN opined:
Even if Knox is convicted this time around, it is unlikely she will ever come back to Italy. There is a valid extradition agreement between the two nations, but the U.S. has not historically honored the agreement. In 1998, an American fighter jet clipped a ski lift cable sending a gondola of 20 passengers to their death in the Italian Dolomite mountain range. Italy requested the extradition of the bomber crew to try them for multiple manslaughter, but the U.S. refused and tried them in a military tribunal instead. They were found not guilty.
And in 2012, Italy’s high court upheld the conviction of 22 CIA agents and an Air Force colonel in conjunction with the extraordinary rendition of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar from a street in Milan. Again, the U.S. refused to comply with the extradition order. Both previous high-profile cases involved state employees or members of the military. Knox’s case is a private matter and there appears to be little if any precedent.
The waters are further muddied by the fact that informed parties in the U.S. disagree as to whether we would extradite Knox should she be convicted in the current proceedings.
Sean Casey, a former prosecutor who is now a partner at Kobre & Kim in New York, believes that a U.S. court or the State Department would be unlikely to take up any extradition request from Italy.
Casey cited an extradition treaty between the United States and Italy that states:
“Extradition shall not be granted when the person sought has been convicted, acquitted or pardoned, or has served the sentence imposed, by the Requested Party for the same acts for which extradition is requested.”
“Under U.S. law, she was once put in jeopardy and later acquitted,” Casey said. “Under the treaty, extradition should not be granted.”
A deputy State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, told CNN in 2011, that although the United States and Italy have an extradition treaty, he was not able to answer speculative questions on extradition issues in the Knox case.
Similarly, State Department Acting Deputy Spokesman Patrick Ventrell noted that the matter was ongoing, and the Italian court’s full ruling had not been released.
“We can’t really comment beyond that,” he told reporters. “We never talk about extradition from this podium in terms of individual cases.”
Casey also believes that Knox may be protected on another level. “Her original verdict was so terribly flawed by prosecutorial overreaching,” the lawyer said, noting that the appellate court that overturned the original conviction detailed those flaws in a damning report of more than 100 pages in length. Casey goes on to say that given those transparent errors, he believes that Italian law enforcement would not seek extradition (if Knox is convicted this time around), “because it would only prolong this law enforcement ordeal.”
Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz disagrees stating that Italian prosecutors might very well extradite Knox and that at a retrial, she “likely will be found guilty — because the evidence supporting a conviction is pretty strong.”
After noting that Knox, now 25, “has a beautiful face and an angelic appearance” (note that the man is clearly not blind), Dershowitz goes on to say that the case was not well tried the first time. “But at a second trial, there’s a very high likelihood that they may very well convict her.”
He predicted that Knox would resist any extradition attempt. But even if she were to succeed in that, “she remains a prisoner in the United States, because Interpol will put a warrant out for her and, if she travels anywhere outside the United States, she’ll be immediately arrested and turned over to Italy.”
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Unless I miss my guess, as the weeks and months pass, Amanda Knox is probably growing increasingly fond of good old American terra firma and probably has very little desire to travel outside of her native land. But still the question remains: Is Amanda Knox as safe as Fort Knox, that legendary and impenetrable Kentucky fortress, notwithstanding the outcome of the current trial, as long as she stays here in America? And although opinions differ depending on which luminary you talk to, my sense is that at this present juncture, no one knows for sure.