A few points on the Kercher murder case

[fpb]

The first thing that needs saying is that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito would have been found guilty in almost any court of law, and, if it comes to that, by almost any American jury. Their situation was desperate from the moment when the body of Amanda's house-sharer was found in their house, Amanda denied being there at the time - and was found to be lying. The fact that she then told a sequel of inconsistent stories, and that she and Sollecito fell out and came close to blaming each other, would have made any prosecutor, anywhere, more, much more, than suspicious.

That being the case, one thing that does not reflect well on Amanda is the unbelievable purblindness and denial of her family. To want to reassure and encourage one's daughter is one thing; to have bought an air ticket home (air tickets from Rome to Seattle don't come cheap) and programmed a party for the day of the sentence - when, apart from anything else, it was inevitable that if the prosecution had lost they would have immediately lodged an appeal - bespeaks collective delusion. The arrogant and self-righteous way the father behaved would have been bad enough in a man seized by a sudden shock, but these people had had two years to get used to the situation their daughter was in, and to let the chance sink in that she might be condemned. Even if she is innocent, the least that can be said of her is that she comes from a family of, to be kind, obstinate, self-blinded, denial-ridden idiots. And to my mind, that makes it slightly more rather than less likely that she is indeed guilty. If that degree of separation from reality is a family trait, then she would indeed be the kind who could take part in a murder in a drugged haze and then convince herself that it was none of her fault. Mind you, I said slightly more likely. It does not convince me one way or another. But the least that can be said is that the house of Knox has done Amanda Knox no favours.

Having said that, there are reasons to take the Italian prosecution to have been motivated by national prejudice. Specifically, there was a clear charge that Amanda was racist: apparently the prosecutors found it significant - or at least, they wanted the jury to find it significant - that the lies she told tended to implicate two black men, one of whom, Patrice Lumumba, turned out to be completely innocent. Now, to an untravelled Italian Seattle may be the same as Memphis, but I for one do not believe that Amanda, even if she suffered from prejudices, would have suffered from such obvious ones. Italians - I realized it to my surprise during the last presidential elections - are convinced that all white Americans are racists, and racists of the obvious, self-stated kind. Those of us who know America better would know that that is mostly nonsense, and that racial feeling, where it exists, often takes much subtler shapes. Someone from a liberal Seattle background would be much more apt, if she had any racial feeling, to burden blacks with well-meaning paternalism and a "tyranny of soft expectations." If any prejudice was in evidence during the trial, it was not that of any white American towards blacks, but of Italians, especially but not exclusively of the left, against white Americans.

However, that is on the whole a secondary factor. As I said, Amanda was likely to be found guilty in any court from the moment she told her first lie. And if my Italian contacts are typical, nothing did her so much harm as her relationship with Raffaele Sollecito. This is a kind of young man Italians, especially Italian women, instinctively dislike and distrust: someone from a good family and with a pleasing face who turns out to have weird and dangerous interests - in his case, knife collecting. It is my strong impression that the guilty verdict was more to do with him than with her, and that in spite of their break-up and separate defences, he brought her down with him.

What can anyone say? I suspect she is guilty; but nobody can know for certain, and in the absence of really convincing material evidence, the whole story has only served to remind us once again how inadequate our means are, even with the best will and the most advanced technology in the world, to find out certain truth.

Comments

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

I'd have to agree with you for the most part. I have not been following the case closely, but it seems to me that there's strong circumstantial evidence, combined with a history of lying on her part; I doubt she'd have been acquitted by an American jury either.

I am always wary of making assumptions based on geographic origin, though. I wouldn't assume she's a liberal (or not a racist) just because she's from Seattle. First of all, Seattle is full of transplants, and rural Washington state is not a lot different than rural Mississippi in some ways. Second, I've met plenty of people who did grow up in "liberal" areas who were nonetheless appallingly racist, just as I've met people from rural Mississippi who hated the racists they grew up with.

As for her family: that doesn't surprise me at all. I've rarely seen parents of an accused murderer (especially a young college kid who completely denies involvement) who weren't absolutely incapable of accepting that their child might actually be guilty and/or convicted.

They might not have factored in a prosecutorial appeal in the event of an acquittal. In the U.S., if you're found not guilty, that's it -- the prosecution doesn't get to appeal. It's one of our most fundamental legal principles. I assume someone should have filled them in on how the Italian justice system works, but combine the aforementioned denial with typical American obliviousness to the fact that Things Work Differently Over Here, and I can see why they might have believed they'd have their daughter on the next plane home.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Double jeopardy is not allowed in Italian law either. What is different is that the two levels of appeal are regarded as part of the trial, although not a necessary part. The sides can accept a first-degree sentence and leave it at that, but both have a right to appeal. I don't know whether the appellate courts are entitled to refuse to hear it. At any rate, in big trials where the evidence is seriously in doubt, there is an expectation that the matter will go all the way to the Supreme Court (Corte di Cassazione. Incidentally, in Italy the Supreme Court, which rules on the legal propriety of lawsuits and trials, is separate from the Constitutional Court, which rules on the Constitutional validity of laws). There are two stages of appeal: the court of appeal proper, which reviews the evidence presented in court and anything new that may have come to light, and the supreme court, which rules only on the legal propriety of previous proceedings (and which, in spite of that, has been responsible for many of the most hilarious and sometimes perverse rulings in Italian legal history). The process is, alas, notoriously slow and overdue for reform (in fact, at the core of the current political struggles are various more or less misguided plans for legal reform), but I would not say that it is, apart from that, any more unfair than what I see of the British and American. In this case, we are talking of a Court of Assizes (Corte d'Assise), which tries serious crimes, an Appellate Court of Assizes (Corte d'Assise d'appello), and a Supreme Court (Corte di Cassazione - Cassazione means "quashing", because this court has the power to quash previous legal proceedings if they were incorrectly done).

Of course you may, individually, find a KKK-type racist in Seattle or an aggressive liberal in the back country of Georgia. I have known one of the latter, who eventually settled in San Francisco. And that brings up the real point - how likely is either of them to be there, on the whole? I was talking about large numbers.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, it just occurred to me: I still don't think that Amanda is a racist in the obvious way, but if the Italian prosecutors are correct and she is, that would add another dimension to her well-known dislike of Meredith, who was half-Indian.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Oh, and the Knoxes had lawyers. Italian lawyers. In two years of arrest and trial, did they never once take the opportunity of being informed of the real state of play? Any lawyer worth his or her salt would sit down with his or her clients and not only brief them on the circumstances, but set out several different possible courses of action and their outcomes. That is why they are called counsel. I do not find the two years of denial by a whole family as easy to understand as you do - two years are enough to have the facts hammered into your head.

[panobjecticon.livejournal.com]

'That being the case, one thing that does not reflect well on Amanda is the unbelievable purblindness and denial of her family. To want to reassure and encourage one's daughter is one thing; to have bought an air ticket home (air tickets from Rome to Seattle don't come cheap) and programmed a party for the day of the sentence - when, apart from anything else, it was inevitable that if the prosecution had lost they would have immediately lodged an appeal - bespeaks collective delusion. The arrogant and self-righteous way the father behaved would have been bad enough in a man seized by a sudden shock, but these people had had two years to get used to the situation their daughter was in, and to let the chance sink in that she might be condemned. Even if she is innocent, the least that can be said of her is that she comes from a family of, to be kind, obstinate, self-blinded, denial-ridden idiots. And to my mind, that makes it slightly more rather than less likely that she is indeed guilty. If that degree of separation from reality is a family trait, then she would indeed be the kind who could take part in a murder in a drugged haze and then convince herself that it was none of her fault. Mind you, I said slightly more likely. It does not convince me one way or another. But the least that can be said is that the house of Knox has done Amanda Knox no favours.'

*sigh*

[benicek.livejournal.com]

"tyranny of soft expectations". What a great phrase. It describes much of the British state education system that I went through.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I actually misquoted that. It was from George W.Bush, and it said "the soft tyranny of low expectations", which is more precise.