Amanda Knox Is Too White Bread America To Be A Killer

On November 2nd of 2007, Meredith Kercher, a twenty one year old British exchange student who was sharing a house as part of a university exchange program, was found murdered.  The Italian police said she was partially clothed under her bed with her windpipe crushed and her throat slashed.  On November 6th, twenty year old Amanda Knox from Spencer, Indiana and twenty three year old Raffaele Sollecito from Giovinazzo, Bari were arrested suspected of the murder of Ms. Kercher.  On the 20th of November, Rudy Guede was arrested in Germany on a warrant issued for his arrest on the basis of DNA and fingerprint evidence found on the victim’s body.  The three suspects were held in custody in Perugia and were charged with murder, sexual assault and theft.

On the 28th of October 2008 Rudy Guede was convicted of conspiracy to murder Ms. Kercher.  He was sentenced to thirty years in prison and was quickly forgotten.  The trial of Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito didn’t begin until January of 2009.  The trial concluded on December 4th when both were found guilty of murder.  Ms. Knox was sentenced to twenty six years in prison while Raffaele Sollecito received a twenty five year sentence.

According to police reports, Amanda Knox implicated herself in the crime during questioning on the two days following the murder.  She initially told the police that she had been in the house when the murder took place and had heard screams but was too afraid to do any investigation or call for help.  But during the police interrogation, she gave several different versions of the events of that particular night.  She claims that her memory was cloudy because she had been smoking hash.  Later, she was ordered to be held while the police continued their investigation.  After her arrest, the media began to focus on her peculiar behavior during police questioning, the grand jury investigation, and throughout the trial.  Often during the proceedings, Ms. Knox could be seen smiling and not taking the matter as seriously as someone should who is on trial for such a serious crime.  The Italian press described her as the face of an angel but the eyes of a killer.

The case against Amanda Knox received extensive media coverage.  Depending on the desired perspective, the woman has been portrayed as everything from a cold blooded killer who took part in a murderous sex game or a poor, innocent middle class white girl from America helplessly caught up in the judicial process in a country where the legal system is often compared to the inquisition.

People most concerned with Amanda’s defense contend that she is the victim of character assassination and Italian’s hatred of America.  When the verdict was announced people outside the Italian courtroom applauded, assumingly for a job well done, when the prosecution emerged.  Amanda’s family vows to continue their fight for justice.  They claim Ms. Knox is still the strong, kindhearted girl they have always known and not the cold killer prosecutors portrayed during the trial.  She’s the kind of strong young woman that smokes hash and claims to be too afraid to do anything, even call the police, when she hears screams from somebody being murdered.

This poor girl’s case has attracted widespread media attention.  It has even prompted a statement from United States Senator Maria Cantwell from Amanda Knox’s home state of Washington.  Ms. Cantwell issued a statement saying she was saddened by the verdict and had serious questions about the Italian justice system and whether the prevailing anti-American sentiment tainted the trial and would be conveying concerns to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  But when does Ms. Cantwell lift a finger to help raise attention to all the cases of blatant injustice that goes on right here in America?

Some people are trying to paint Ms. Knox as an outsider in Italy’s justice system, unable to gain any semblance of fairness in a system designed to assume that she’s guilty and demands that she proves her innocence.  Is this anything like the court system here in America that finds black people automatically guilty with jurors who are more than ready to convict black people because they know that they’ve done something sometime and somewhere in the past?  The American collective stands ready to believe that it’s okay for black people to be assumed guilty based on per capita statistics instead of the facts of the case.  But the moment we believe that we see one of our blue eyed, pretty white girls being railroaded, we want to cry foul.

Whether or not Ms. Knox is innocent or guilty is pretty pointless.  People will believe what they want to believe regardless of facts.  People will even pick and choose what they accept as facts.  A statistic that shows black people as criminals can be taken to the bank while statistics that show black people as victims of a justice system predisposed to find black people guilty will be scientifically flawed or just plain hogwash.

Let a white American girl go on trial for murder in an environment outside of America’s jurisdiction.  Not even the Italians have the right to convict one of the members of our dominant class.  We don’t have a problem believing the men we hold in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are the most corrupt of the most corrupt.  We are ready to believe that those foreigners are so guilty that they don’t even deserve the protection of our justice system.  They can go straight to hell.  But the American girl found in the house where a gruesome murder took place, heard the murder being committed but couldn’t do anything to help because she was racked with fear?  She wouldn’t hurt a fly in her drug induced stupor so thick she can’t remember jack.  People’s opinion on this case, like so many others, is just another manifestation of America’s hypocrisy.