Even the
New York Times
fell prey to Knox family propaganda. In June, as the prosecution was wrapping up, blogger Timothy Egan lambasted Italy’s derelict justice system: “The case against Knox has so many holes in it, and is so tied to the career of a powerful Italian prosecutor who is under indictment for professional misconduct, that any fair-minded jury would have thrown it out months ago.” He declared the trial a “railroad job from hell”—citing the authority of CBS legal analyst Paul Ciolino, who had been to Perugia in the early days of the investigation. But Egan never came to Italy for a hearing or read any court documents. If he had, he might not have made such basic mistakes as getting the number of jurors wrong or substantially
misrepresenting Rudy Guede’s role. (Another part of the pro-Amanda brief was that since Guede had already been convicted of the murder, it was a horrible miscarriage of justice to keep prosecuting Amanda and Raf.) Egan also dredged up the dead issue of Mignini’s obsession with Satanism, even though that angle was never introduced in court. Egan’s piece was widely picked up across Italy, where he was criticized for his pious, uninformed views. The
New York Times
regular Rome-based correspondent, Rachel Donadio, made it to only a few hearings over the course of the trial. But when she came, she was greeted with great hostility in Perugia, despite her efforts to report accurately on the proceedings, in blatant contradiction to Egan’s blogs.
THE VERDICT CAME DOWN after midnight on December 5, 2009. The local police had grossly underestimated the number of reporters on the scene and ended up herding us forcibly—and painfully—through the narrow wooden doors into the courthouse. The cameras were relegated to the press room; print press were allowed in court after showing the police officers that our cell phones were turned off so there
would be no rogue photos when the verdict was read. Curt, Edda, Chris, and Cassandra and all their daughters were there. So were Raffaele’s father, stepmother, and sister. As at a wedding, the
innocentisti
press stood behind Amanda’s family. I stood behind Meredith’s—Arline, John, and their other children, Stephanie, John Jr., and Lyle, who sat with a representative from the British Embassy. When Amanda walked in for the last time, there were no cameras to snap her picture. No one yelled questions. The judge and jury came in solemnly. Two of the women jurors were crying. It was well understood by then what the judge would say. He took a deep breath before he read the word
“condannato”
for Amanda Marie Knox. Both she and Raffaele were convicted of the crimes of sexual assault, murder, and staging a crime scene; Amanda was additionally convicted of defaming Patrick Lumumba. Amanda began to weep. Her family did not understand the Italian statement, and only when they saw Amanda react did their worst fears come true. Deanna’s cries filled the courtroom. Edda wept in silence. Curt’s anger was palpable. Chris seemed oblivious. Raffaele’s father shook his head, tears streaming down his face. His stepmother yelled out “Fuck you!” and then “Be strong,
Raffaele” into the courtroom. Arline Kercher turned her whole body to stare at Edda Mellas; John put his hand on her shoulder. Raffaele began to shake as he cried. Amanda wept in Luciano Ghirga’s arms before the guards took her away. There were no hugs in the dungeon, and this time, the two convicted killers rode back to prison in separate vans.
Then no one knew quite what to do. David Marriott had not bothered coming to Perugia, and his clients were left to fight their way through the media scrum unprotected. Edda and Deanna escaped quickly and ran down the street to a waiting car that whisked them to the Brufani hotel. Curt clung to Ashley and Delaney, pushing away cameramen as he tried to leave the building. When Curt and his two daughters finally made it out of the old wooden doors, they heard the cries “Assassins, assassins” as the two paddy wagons drove past the front of the courthouse, blue lights flashing into the night. Then, in a surreal moment, Curt, Ashley, and Delaney marched, heads high, down the corso Vannuci to the Brufani hotel, a crush of cameras following them like the tail of a kite. Documentary filmmaker Garfield Kennedy was in front of Curt, shooting back toward the crowd, getting the shot
he was waiting for. Safely inside the Brufani, the family regrouped in their network-funded suites and sat for interviews with the favored correspondents.
Back in United States, there was an intemperate, jingoistic burst of outrage from the people who knew about the trial only through Knox-approved dispatches. Journalist Judy Bachrach, who had traveled to Perugia for
Vanity Fair
for a preliminary hearing, which had been closed to the press, described the case against Knox as “a magic show filled with testimony about Amanda’s vibrator and condoms, and empty of proof” even though she never attended the actual trial. Seattle Senator Maria Cantwell threatened diplomatic action. (Never mind that the U.S. Embassy in Rome, as well as international human rights groups, had decided early on that the case was legitimate and did not merit extraordinary intervention, although the embassy did send observers to the trial.) Donald Trump and hundreds of other people with comments on the
New York Times
Web site vowed to boycott Italy. Naturally, Italians found this all deeply insulting. It took several days before the outcry quit drowning out the more reasonable voices observing that, given the evidence in the case, Amanda would probably have been convicted in an American court as well. That was followed
by Amanda’s own comment after the verdict, to a member of Italian parliament touring the prison: “Yes, the system was fair to me.” (The family tried to deny she’d said it.)
The Knox clan hung around for a few days after the verdict, and the networks continued their courtship, all for the ultimate get—a prison interview with Amanda. But eight days after the verdict, two wire service reporters sneaked into the prison under the flag of a joint Italian-American foundation and got the exclusive first tidbit.
“I’m scared,” Amanda told Patricia Thomas of the Associated Press. “I don’t know what is going on.” It wasn’t the interview that everyone wanted. Thomas was not even able to ask about the trial; still, it lessened the value of those first jailhouse words. Marriott and the family have hinted that they will not give anyone an interview until the appeal process begins—in effect dangling the carrot to keep the networks interested and their coverage positive.
The family had been optimistic that Amanda would be acquitted and even bought a plane ticket for her to come home. Edda had planned a spa day for her back in Seattle, and Marriott was already brokering book and movie deals. Instead, Edda stayed until Christmas
Eve. On her first attempt to visit Amanda after the verdict, the mother was denied access to Capanne prison. Now that Amanda was a convicted murderer, the rules changed and the visits were limited to just six a month.
10
“You Try to Be Persuasive but Not Insulting”
F
OR THE THIRD YEAR in a row, Amanda Knox had the lead part in the Christmas play at Capanne prison outside Perugia. She played the blue-eyed Virgin Mary in a solemn religious pageant performed under the direction of the prison chaplain. But her long-running role on the international stage has ended, for now. Since December 5, when she was convicted of murdering Meredith Kercher, Amanda has lost the distraction of her weekly outings to court, each one a star turn before a ravenous media. Now, she is just another inmate, moved to the felony wing of the prison. Her previous cell mates—a Roma gypsy, a Chinese immigrant, and a woman from Kosovo who was on trial for killing her boyfriend—have been replaced by a fifty-three-year-old American drug pusher from New Orleans serving
a four-year sentence. Amanda’s next hope for an outing is when her appeal is heard, most likely in the fall of 2010.
Amanda is fighting the demons that come with incarceration—depression, anxiety, paranoia, and hopelessness. Her hair is falling out under the stress. She is haunted by insomnia. Her dreams keep her awake. Her family will not authorize a jailhouse interview because of her fragile psychological state. Her family has been fairly successful at controlling how Amanda is portrayed, at least in U.S. media, but they have never been able to control how she presents herself. Amanda never quite fit the family’s script of a naive honor student, and now she has been in prison for more than two years, learning to negotiate the tricky politics of life in a population of murderers, drug addicts, and thieves. Gone is the whimsical girl who felt confident enough to perform cartwheels in a police station. She is taking correspondence courses at the University of Washington to finish her degree, but she has no access to e-mail, so she has to rely on the Italian postal system to turn in her schoolwork. An avid linguist who came to Europe to study German and Italian, she is now teaching herself Chinese and Russian. She gets an hour of outdoor recreation each day. She can visit the
prison beauty salon once a week. She is on the waiting list to work in the laundry. The money she makes there can be spent on treats such as writing paper, candy bars, and cigarettes, which she can trade for even better stuff like music CDs and smuggled drugs. She gets just six visits a month from family members, who can bring her certain items of food and clothing.
Amanda is still very much her own person, not inclined to give much thought to the consequences of her actions. She writes uncensored letters from prison to whomever she wants. She speaks freely to anyone who walks past her cell. Prison administrators see a certain value in letting visitors swing by her cell block to get a look at Capanne’s biggest celebrity, and the family has no control over that. In the days after the verdict, a local Umbrian lawmaker visited Capanne and just happened upon Amanda’s cell. Later, he reported that she told him that she still had faith in the Italian judicial system and that her trial was “correct.” Amanda’s family quickly shot down those comments as “misconstrued.” After all, how could they justify the media maelstrom in America if Amanda actually believed she got a fair trial in Italy?
Amanda’s family is increasingly desperate both to keep the story alive and to keep it under their control.
But putting her on camera is risky. If Amanda were to appear mentally unstable or repeat some of her early recollections of being in the house when Meredith was murdered, it would hurt her already fragile public image. And to compound the potential problems, both Amanda and her parents have now been sued for defamation for claiming that the Perugia police brutalized her during their interrogation. In an interview they gave to John Follain of the
Sunday Times
of London, Curt and Edda repeated Amanda’s claims that she had been given no food or water for nine hours and threatened and beaten by the police. They were served papers at lawyer Luciano Ghirga’s office when they arrived in Perugia on November 27, 2009, for closing arguments in their daughter’s case. Amanda’s lawyers never lodged an official complaint for the alleged police brutality, even though Edda told me last summer that they promised her they would do it right after the verdict, no matter how that went. But the lawyers let it go, so the police saw a chance to clear their name. In January 2010, Amanda was served notice in her prison cell. She, too, is being charged for testifying that police hit her on the back of the head twice. After months of hostile publicity, the Perugian authorities are sensitive to criticism. But the family is
wary, too; it would be extremely risky right now to have Amanda pressed by a tough investigative journalist looking for ratings.
AMANDA’S FAMILY HAS mortgaged both the Knox and the Mellas family homes and borrowed against their pensions. They have held frequent fund-raisers and accepted donations of both cash and frequent-flyer points on the Amanda Defense Fund Web site (
www.amandadefensefund.org
). Curt, who lost his job at Macy’s last summer, has not yet found new work. On top of legal fees, Amanda’s family has the added burden of international travel. Edda has hinted that she would move to Perugia if she could find reasonable employment as a teacher or translator. For now, Curt, Edda, Chris, and Edda’s brother still come in shifts. But if Amanda loses her appeals, it seems unlikely they will be able to sustain this schedule for years and years.
Raffaele Sollecito’s parents are extremely wealthy, so they have not been substantially harmed by the costs of his defense. But they believe, passionately, that their son suffered from being tried together with Knox, and they may move to sever the two cases on appeal.
Raffaele’s lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno, admitted that she started working on the appeal on the trip back to Rome the night of the verdict. The risk she took to mount a joint defense had failed her. On appeal, she has hinted, she may go it alone. The evidence against Raf was far less damning than that against Amanda, and, as is Bongiorno’s habit, she sent out drones to interview jurists and determine precisely what happened in the judge’s chambers. What she learned confirmed her initial sense that Raffaele was a more sympathetic figure without Amanda. The appeal may well prove her right.
The priority for the Sollecitos is getting Raffaele off suicide watch. Since the verdict, he has been increasingly withdrawn. He is in the sex offenders’ ward at Capanne, and like most of the inmates there, he is on heavy antidepressants. He has given up his studies, and his family says he has also given up hope. He has stopped writing letters to his daily newspaper, and he barely responds when his family comes to visit him. He knows enough about the Italian justice system to understand that his chances of getting off on the first round of appeal are slim. The thought of spending four or five years until the second level of appeal is too much for him to bear. His family is petitioning to have
him moved closer to them in Puglia, but the prisons in the south are much rougher.
In Italy, the appeal process is complex and involves two levels. A full acquittal is rarely won on the first round, even though a full 50 percent of all cases are won on the second and final stage of the appeal. On the first round, the appeals judge can choose to overturn the conviction entirely or to uphold the decision and simply increase or reduce the sentence. In Rudy Guede’s appeal, which was heard around the same time that closing arguments were being made in Amanda and Raffaele’s trial, the judge chose to uphold the initial ruling; he agreed that Rudy murdered Meredith Kercher along with Amanda and Raffaele. But Rudy did win a reduction in his sentence from thirty to sixteen years for what the judge called “extenuating factors,” not least of which was his cooperation in placing Amanda and Raffaele at the crime scene.