So a scummy murderess gets off scot free

[fpb]

I haven't been this disgusted at my country since 1982, when we betrayed Britain over the Falklands. (The British won, too, which means that Italy got nothing for its betrayal of an ally except shame and disgrace. But then Italians are like that: they are always at their most stupid when they think they are being crafty.) The Meredith Kercher murder was one of the most squalid and cruel events in recent memory, and the guilt of Knox and Sollecito was obvious to anyone who could read. So that is how you get off with murder: be pretty, have a shameless and prosperous family who sets up a media circus on your behalf among gullible American hacks, and manage to look pathetic every time you are on screen. Then evidence be damned. Well, the need for wide structural reform of Italian justice has been cryingly obvious for decades, but this proves once and for all that a moral reformation is even more desperately needed. Nobody who took their oath to justice seriously for two minutes could ever have released such a sentence. When the Supreme Court hears the inevitable prosecution appeal and finds Knox guilty as they have to, she and her accomplices will be mocking at us from her bolthole across the ocean. And her victim can rest in her grave - abused, forgotten and unavenged.

Comments

My Two Cents

[saturndevouring.livejournal.com]

I read this in 'Rolling Stone,' and this is where trouble arises for someone like me. I read Coulter, who clearly has an axe to grind (it's all about "liberals!") and then this, which, if you read the entire article, paints her as the innocent victim from the get-go. As someone who is shamefully illiterate in Italian and unable to go to the source, I'm curious for your take on this report.

"[The list of problems with the case against Knox was long]: incompetent police work, leading to the mishandling of evidence. The lack of any physical trace of Knox in Kercher's bedroom. Italy's carnivalesque judicial process, where there is never order in the court, the lawyers and defendants constantly interrupting the proceedings with groans and catcalls and wild gesticulations, while the press in the gallery yammers away like the kids in the back of the classroom. The prosecution's failure to establish motive or intent ("We live in an age of violence with no motive," said one prosecutor). And the fact that prosecutors did not immediately drop the case against Knox and Sollecito after the bloody fingerprints and footprints came back matching a 20-year-old petty thief named Rudy Guede.

These were valid criticisms, but Knox's supporters missed one crucial point. The prosecution, despite their ineptitude, would never have been able to convict Knox and Sollecito all by themselves. They needed help. And they would get it — from Amanda Knox.

Knox had several disadvantages from the start: She was American and, despite majoring in Italian at the University of Washington, could barely speak the language. Her poor comprehension may have contributed to her second problem: her inability to realize that she was, from the first day of the investigation, suspected of murder. Most damaging, however, was her obstinate faith in the kindness of strangers.

Lawrence Auster vs Ann Coulter

[frittomisto.livejournal.com]

Auster at view from the right

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/020638.html

has an interesting discussion / debate about the case vis-a-vis Ann Coulter. He's an "innocentista". Perhaps you should go there and duke it out. And I must say, he makes a better (less emotional) case for the twosome's innocence than you do for their guilt.

Auster asks an interesting question:

"Another point: if the case is on the up and up, why did the prosecutors in the appeals trial demand that the Knox and Sollecito, after having already spent four years in prison, serve several months in solitary confinement? Doesn't that suggest some kind of out of control vindictiveness on the prosecutors' part?"

You say this: "and the guilt of Knox and Sollecito was obvious to anyone who could read" but that only makes you lose credibility as a commentator. You take for granted what needs to be proved.

By comparison, yours is merely an emotional outburst.

[sanscouronne.livejournal.com]

Would you be willing to link to your previous entries on this case? I do believe that you wrote a few.
It is interesting that you take a line so strongly for Knox's guilt, because most people I know who are into the case maintain her innocence, or at least serious doubts about it. And not in any emotional, pro-American way. I would like to read more about what you have said regarding the case.