Amanda Knox: The Trial Was Fixed — By Cameras, Not Courts

Amanda Knox: The Trial Was Fixed — By Cameras, Not Courts

The high court in Italy has spoken; all the drama is at an end, and Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are innocent of killing Meredith Kercher. But still, tongues wag.

I didn’t follow the Amanda Knox case closely. I did think, from the start, that there was a witch hunt going on. I pretty much knew it when Meredith Kercher’s father wrote a book about his murdered child and the people he thought, based on shoddy so-called research mainly in UK tabloids, had killed her, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

It would be natural for a father to be distressed about the murder of his child. It is not natural for a father who is a journalist by profession to write a polemic against a possible suspect when legal proceedings are still underway. It is, in fact, unethical and reprehensible, and has cast doubt along with aspersions, rendering the entire episode impossible ever to conclude beyond all doubt. I doubt that’s what John Kercher intended, but that’s what his “do it yourself brain surgery” has wrought.

I don’t believe Knox and Sollecito killed Meredith Kercher. I base that belief on the evidence that I know of, that is, that there was no DNA of Knox or Sollecito found except some of Knox’s in the sink which she shared day in and day out with Kercher. Of course there was.

Self-incrimination, or the confusion of callow youth?

Knox made some mildly idiotic statements early on. But then, she was a relatively sheltered young American woman in a foreign country being accused of a heinous crime without the benefit of family or even a good, bi-lingual lawyer to translate for her and explain Italian jurisprudence to her. Apparently, there was something of a kangaroo-court atmosphere about it all, if publications more reliable than the UK tabloids are to be given credence. It almost looks as if Knox was railroaded because she was a naive American, and Sollecito because he was a man and the lover of a naive American.

During their investigation, the Italian police questioned and/or arrested four people, three of whom were sentenced for killing Meredith Kercher and one released. The first one sentenced could not have been a confederate of Knox and Sollecito if they had killed Kercher…so how could the Italian courts send all three of them to jail for the murder? It suggests Italian jurisprudence is mainly about tossing stones, seeing who they hit, jailing all of those the stones were aimed at, and hoping it turns out one of the stones has hit someone who actually committed a crime. No wonder cases can go through a dozen iterations; it would take that much to separate the strands of confusion.

There is a god…or at least a high court with ultimate decision-making power

Thankfully, apparently, the Italian high court has decided the case, based on the evidence and possibly not wanting a global black eye by trying the case again and again and again as is possible in the Italian system.

I am happy for Knox and Sollecito. I am sad about Kercher’s death.

But I am incensed that Kercher’s father misused his position as a journalist and blackened Knox’s name, not out of a quest for truth so much as anger that his own daughter was dead and another man’s daughter alive…or at least, that’s how it looks. It also looks as if his meddling caused one of the guilty findings, at least. That the Court of Cassation set aside both guilty rulings indicates to me that they found too many irregularities to uphold either conviction.

One must ask why the Kerchers had a lawyer; surely the Italian prosecutors were in charge of bringing and pursuing the case. The only reason I can think of for them to have a lawyer in the case is to pressure the court for the outcome Mr. Kercher desired. If it was to see that someone was punished for the murder, as noted, someone is already in jail for that, and one must assume the evidence DOES support that person’s punishment since the high court has not indicated that it will rehear that case.

Nothing will bring Meredith Kercher back. And nothing will ever change the fact that Amanda Knox was convicted of killing her twice on what the highest court in Italy has decided was insufficient evidence, and finally acquitted her. But some will always wonder, despite the fact that there is, indeed, a man in jail for Meredith’s murder, apparently based on actual evidence. The Italian ‘truth stones’ hit him, and stuck. And that should be the end of it.

So one would have to ask: What does John Kercher want? Does he want to subject everyone who ever knew his daughter to a version of his own pain? Is he trying to ruin the lives of Knox and Sollecito because he thinks he has the unilateral right to exact revenge from someone, anyone? He has already besmirched journalism by misusing his profession to write a book while the case was still underway, a book best termed yellow journalism. But worse than the black eye he gave journalism is, of course, the frenzy he whipped up against Knox and Sollecito that will doubtless cast a shadow over them throughout their lives. Perhaps that’s what he wanted; to ensure continued suffering for someone, anyone.

If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit

I don’t think Knox and Sollecito had anything to do with the murder of Meredith Kercher. If Kercher and Knox turned out not to be a good fit as roomies as some have suggested, one of them moving out as soon as possible was the obvious solution, not a brutal murder. But Knox has never indicated that there was any more rancor than would be normal for roomies getting used to each other and a new country. Indeed, she has always referred to Kercher as a friend. So was there a problem about men, jealousy or the like? That would seem far-fetched, too. After all, these were not bimbo cheerleader moms from Texas who thought they could make their own kid Number One by killing the competition; they were college-educated young women from middle-class homes making the most of a chance to study abroad.

John Kercher very likely muddied the waters by his grandstanding. I do think they’ve got the murderer in jail in Italy and have had from the start. I do think Knox and Sollecito are innocent. And I do think the publisher of Kercher’s book, Hodder & Stoughton, needs to subordinate its quest for sales to at least some rudimentary discernment about whether books they publish fit the category of journalism or witch hunt. The publisher and John Kercher have cast a sorry pall over journalism, one it hardly needed what with Fox News and Jayson Blair and other irregularities, and rendered it virtually impossible for anyone who wasn’t in Meredith Kercher’s room at the time to truly know who killed her.

And that’s not fair to Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito or you and me. But most of all, it is unfair to Meredith Kercher, who will forever be the young woman whose death, because of the vagaries of Italian jurisprudence and the unethical acts of a bereaved journalist and a greedy publisher, may never seem to be entirely solved nor expiated.

Nancy Vawter
Nancy Vawter

Nancy Vawter has been a reporter and writer since shortly after her graduation from the University of Arizona. She spent seven years with the New York Post, working as a national feature writer in New York. She later taught journalism as an assistant professor at American University in Washington.