Of all the millions of words written about the marathon trial for the murder of Meredith Kercher, some of the most revealing appeared in a dispatch from Italy's leading news agency, Ansa, on Wednesday."Certainly, the decision facing the [judges and jurors] will not be an easy one," wrote Ansa's reporter, Matteo Guidelli, as he looked ahead to the final phase of the trial of Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito."Sentencing to life imprisonment two young people, aged 22 and 25, would mean destroying their lives forever," he continued, "but letting them off would mean gainsaying not only the entire investigation, but also the judges who have reached decisions before them."It hardly needs to be said that the "danger" of contradicting police and prosecutors would not exactly weigh heavily in the deliberations of a British or American jury. But Italy is not Britain or the US.For the "Anglo-Saxon" reporters who followed the trial, it was about bloodstains and DNA; contradictory statements and suspicious omissions. So it was for their Italian counterparts.But for them, as for their readers, there was always a further dimension. Italy is a country in which the preservation of "face" is of enormous importance. And in this case there were many people with reputations at stake: the detectives who investigated the murder, Perugia's prosecutors, who oversaw their inquiry, and the judges who indicted Knox and Sollecito and decided that the evidence was sufficient to keep them locked up for more than two years. [...]
Of all the millions of words written about the marathon trial for the murder of Meredith Kercher, some of the most revealing appeared in a dispatch from Italy's leading news agency, Ansa, on Wednesday.
"Certainly, the decision facing the [judges and jurors] will not be an easy one," wrote Ansa's reporter, Matteo Guidelli, as he looked ahead to the final phase of the trial of Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.
"Sentencing to life imprisonment two young people, aged 22 and 25, would mean destroying their lives forever," he continued, "but letting them off would mean gainsaying not only the entire investigation, but also the judges who have reached decisions before them."
It hardly needs to be said that the "danger" of contradicting police and prosecutors would not exactly weigh heavily in the deliberations of a British or American jury. But Italy is not Britain or the US.
For the "Anglo-Saxon" reporters who followed the trial, it was about bloodstains and DNA; contradictory statements and suspicious omissions. So it was for their Italian counterparts.
But for them, as for their readers, there was always a further dimension. Italy is a country in which the preservation of "face" is of enormous importance. And in this case there were many people with reputations at stake: the detectives who investigated the murder, Perugia's prosecutors, who oversaw their inquiry, and the judges who indicted Knox and Sollecito and decided that the evidence was sufficient to keep them locked up for more than two years. [...]
It hardly needs to be said that the "danger" of contradicting police and prosecutors would not exactly weigh heavily in the deliberations of a British or American jury.
Yeah sure... *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
If they won, it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury; that they were guilty of violence and threats; that the confessions were involuntary and improperly admitted in evidence; and that the convictions were erroneous. That would mean that the Home Secretary would have either to recommend that they be pardoned or to remit the case to the Court of Appeal. That was such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, `It cannot be right that these actions should go any further.'
That was such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, `It cannot be right that these actions should go any further.'
So I was a bit surprised to find that in the reporting from Seattle, in both the corporate media and the blogs, there was a lot of support for Knox and belief that she wasn't guilty of murder. She and her handlers have done an excellent job of presenting her as a sympathetic figure, at least to the Northwestern public (dunno what "America" thinks, since I don't believe the case has much of a profile outside the Pacific NW). It may have been the case that Knox's family and defenders calculated they had a better chance of winning in the US court of public opinion than in a Perugia courtroom.
Senator Cantwell's outspoken statement is a good example of how effective that strategy has been.
Knox's defenders are exploiting Berlusconi for their own purposes, painting Italy as a fundamentally corrupt place with a rigged system of justice, and they hold up Berlusconi as high-profile evidence of their claims, as if he somehow proves that the whole system is untrustworthy. The fact that Berlusconi's immunity was overturned by the Italian high court doesn't seem to have registered at all, and certainly hasn't dented the emerging view of Italy as a place where a cute coed can't get a fair shake.
Of course, this whole line of argument in Knox's defense says more about the US "system" of "justice" than it does about Italy. When a jury returns a verdict that the public dislikes, they've found ways to discredit the jurors and the verdict, and Knox's defenders assume the same playbook can be used against the Perugia court. Further, the notion that Knox got railroaded in an unfair court system is little more than projection, as it is the US justice system itself that is fundamentally and deeply unjust, with rampant corruption and a complete lack of accountability that makes a mockery of our claims to fairness and democracy. And the world will live as one
Hillary Clinton has said that she will meet a US senator to discuss claims that Amanda Knox was the victim of a flawed trial and anti-Americanism. The conviction of the 22-year-old Seattle student for murdering her British flatmate Meredith Kercher has opened the floodgates to a wave of antipathy in America towards the Italian justice system.As angry Americans promised to boycott Italian holidays, wine and food, a vociferous support group calling itself Friends of Amanda Knox urged people to email Barack Obama to ask him to support her appeal.
The conviction of the 22-year-old Seattle student for murdering her British flatmate Meredith Kercher has opened the floodgates to a wave of antipathy in America towards the Italian justice system.
As angry Americans promised to boycott Italian holidays, wine and food, a vociferous support group calling itself Friends of Amanda Knox urged people to email Barack Obama to ask him to support her appeal.
That all being said, there is a surprising amount of sympathy for Knox, particularly in the Seattle area and the Pacific Northwest as a whole. As I said in my reply to de Gondi above, I'm not exactly sure when and why that shift happened, but there is a widespread belief that Knox didn't deserve to be found guilty of murder, and that she didn't deserve a 26-year sentence.
Still, that doesn't necessarily translate into any meaningful movement against Italy; Rick Steves, a Seattle-based travel writer and TV host, won't have any problems selling his popular Italy guidebooks.
Hopefully Hillary can rein Cantwell in and defuse this tempest. And the world will live as one
