Amanda Knox is free

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I had heard of Amanda Knox, the young American woman convicted of murder in Italy, but I didn't think all that much about her case until I read The Monster of Florence, the fantastic book by crime writer Douglas Preston and Italian journalist Mario Spezi on perhaps the most notorious serial killer in Italian history -- it includes an afterward on the Knox case, presented as yet another case of gross injustice on the part of the incredibly corrupt Italian legal system (with some of the same people involved).

Reading that book, one thing was clear: Amanda Knox was innocent.

She was a victim of that system, from police to prosecutors, and despite overwhelming evidence she was rotting away in an Italian prison. The system had too much riding on her conviction ever to let her go, and while she had a good deal of support in the U.S., with family and friends fighting for her conviction to be overturned and for her release, a noble and determined struggle for the truth finally to prevail, in Italy and elsewhere she was widely seen as a bloodthirsty cult murderer, a femme fatale of sorts, so strong was the very much anti-American propaganda machine lined up against her, feeding a lascivious public with more and more lies.

For more on the case, see this recent piece by Katie Crouch at Slate:

So why are these people still in jail? There are many layers of reasons, largely having to do with the singular and complicated Italian legal system. Not that ours is so perfect. (Please see the West Memphis Three.) But some of this mess, it may be said, was caused by tabloid-hungry folks at dinner parties who wanted a different death for Meredith Kercher than a break-in gone wrong. I know I did, sad as I am about it. And Giuliano Mignini, the prosecutor, obliged us...

My educated end-of-summer conclusion: Two innocent people are locked up partly because orgies are fun to talk about.

That may very well be true, though I would add that the prosecution -- the system -- wanted to find Knox guilty and made sure it happened. Those involved wanted it for personal and professional reasons, to get ahead, to make a splash in a high-profile case. Knox was their victim, and she paid for it.

Until now, at long last:

With a rapt worldwide television audience looking on, an Italian court on Monday reversed the murder conviction of 24-year-old Amanda Knox, the American student whose sensational murder trial had reverberated on both sides of the Atlantic.

The decision was read out a little before 10 p.m. to a courtroom heavy with tensions and emotions built up over the four years since the arrest of Ms. Knox and her boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, for the killing of her roommate, Meredith Kercher. Mr. Sollecito’s conviction was also overturned Monday.

As it became evident that she was being cleared of all charges, save one of defamation, a deeply stressed Ms. Knox slumped in her chair and began to sob, before falling into the arms of one of her lawyers, Maria Del Grosso.

"She'd been terrified; if I hadn't held her up she would have crumbled," Ms. Del Grosso said. "All she could say was thank you."

Throughout the original trial and the appeal, prosecutors tried to paint Ms. Knox as a calculating femme fatale, a "she-devil" capable of murderous acts despite her sweet courtroom appearance and demeanor.

But their case was based mostly on circumstantial evidence. The validity of the main forensic evidence, microscopic amounts of DNA on the murder weapon and on a bra clasp, was thrown into doubt this summer by a report from independent experts that was highly critical of the police's handling and analysis of the materials. 

Circumstantial evidence that in the end didn't stand up, and much more that Preston and Spezi get into in their book. Again, it was abundantly clear that she was innocent.

I don't know if Amanda Knox is a good person or not. I presume she is. She was over in Italy as a young woman travelling abroad, as many young Americans do, and she got caught up in something horrendous, accused of a brutal murder she didn't commit, then convicted and held in prison for four years. And while one certainly feels for Kercher's family, what do they know about what did and didn't happen? Knox can't be their scapegoat just because the authorities told them she did it and they want closure. I hope she can find peace now, and can find someway to go on with her life.

There will of course be people who continue to vilify Knox. I saw that already, shortly after the verdict came down. Just read the comments to any news article on it, though I warn you you'll find yourself in a cesspool of ignorance and vitriol.

But she is free. Justice has finally been done, overcoming great odds stacked against it by a system that seems to reward opportunism, incompetence, and downright malevolence.

Yes, Amanda Knox is free. And that's all that matters.