Amanda Knox is free.

Calboner

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I have found this case bizarre from the get-go. From time to time I would read accounts of it in news reports, but I could never keep the facts and allegations straight in my memory because no version of them that I read ever made sense to me. Certainly the representation of Ms. Knox given by the prosecution a few days ago was so melodramatic as to be self-discrediting. I'm not surprised that the case fell apart in the end.
 

thadjock

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I really wish I could say "Amanda who?" and be as ignorant as I'm pretending to be. This didn't need to be the international news circus it was, and I was done with caring about it about... oh... 4 years ago.

^
this

the real crime is the ratings whore media. GA just executed an innocent guy and they gave that story all of 1.5 minutes on the day he was executed, instead we get around the clock casey anthony and amanda knox.

those hiker guys must be really bummed, their 15min was more like 5 (though i'd be happy to hear they're in a development deal with falcon or T.I.M. about their middle east prison story). Remember kids, in order for your story to have legs, you have to be single white female, and at least a 7/10......a crazy 7 but yeah 7, also helps to have crazy parents (will Beth Twitty's star ever fade?)
 
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Calboner

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Indeed, facts seem not to have been at a premium. All the better for a well funded defendant.
Oh, yeah, "well-funded":
Since Amanda Knox first was locked up four years ago, a member of her immediate family or circle of close friends from Seattle has been in Perugia, Italy, almost continuously, to assure she saw a friendly face during visiting hours.

That has required a tremendous financial and logistical juggle, and the help of a horde of new friends. Thanks to a supporter who worked for British Airways, her mother, Edda Mellas, took cheap standby flights to Rome.

Mellas and Knox's father, Curt, divorced and remarried, have taken out second mortgages, run up credit-card debt and drained their retirement funds. Knox's grandmother took out a $250,000 mortgage to contribute to legal bills that far exceed $1 million.

They eventually rented a small "agri-tourismo" — a farm house — outside Perugia and bought a beat-up car. . . .

The pledge for family and friends to always be nearby for visits required sacrifices.

Edda Mellas, a math teacher in the Highline School District, used her personal vacation and sick days as well as those donated by others. Her husband, Chris Mellas, worked remotely at his job as an IT manager.

Curt Knox lost his job as a controller at Macy's but was hired recently by the Seattle Opera. He brought packages of Hamburger Helper on trips to Italy, growing tired of Italian food, according to "The Fatal Gift of Beauty," a book on the case by Nina Burleigh.

Knox's younger sister, Deanna, dropped out of Western Washington University and began working to fund her trips. Knox's friend from the University of Washington, Madison Paxton, moved to Perugia, and several other UW classmates dropped in for periods of time.

Back in the United States, the Friends of Amanda collected about $80,000 in a series of fundraisers. Some people donated air miles. (Source)
Remember also that Knox has to pay a fine of 22,000 euros for slander.
 

Incocknito

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I have heard that she "has a rich family" and that they have spent £1 million (one million pounds) on "publicity". If you throw enough money at something you can make it go away.

I personally think that Amanda Knox was guilty. The most interesting thing to me is the fact that when asked "did you murder Meredith" or "were you involved in the murder" she can never say "No."

All she says is something to the effect of "I am a good person, blah blah blah." This happens several times. Unfortunately there is so much of the 'Knox is free' media that I can't find these videos. The most demonstrative video is the one where she addresses the court before being sentenced. An innocent person would be able to say "No" when asked if she commited the crime. But she never says that. That to me is a clue that she is not innocent.

Also she has been proven to be a liar many times. She said she was hit by an officer but then could not identify the officer.

I've not seen her show remorse either. All she ever says is "I, I, I" and tries to make herself out as the victim.
 
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SilverTrain

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Oh, yeah, "well-funded":

Since Amanda Knox first was locked up four years ago, a member of her immediate family or circle of close friends from Seattle has been in Perugia, Italy, almost continuously, to assure she saw a friendly face during visiting hours.

That has required a tremendous financial and logistical juggle, and the help of a horde of new friends. Thanks to a supporter who worked for British Airways, her mother, Edda Mellas, took cheap standby flights to Rome.

Mellas and Knox's father, Curt, divorced and remarried, have taken out second mortgages, run up credit-card debt and drained their retirement funds. Knox's grandmother took out a $250,000 mortgage to contribute to legal bills that far exceed $1 million.

They eventually rented a small "agri-tourismo" — a farm house — outside Perugia and bought a beat-up car. . . .

The pledge for family and friends to always be nearby for visits required sacrifices.

Edda Mellas, a math teacher in the Highline School District, used her personal vacation and sick days as well as those donated by others. Her husband, Chris Mellas, worked remotely at his job as an IT manager.

Curt Knox lost his job as a controller at Macy's but was hired recently by the Seattle Opera. He brought packages of Hamburger Helper on trips to Italy, growing tired of Italian food, according to "The Fatal Gift of Beauty," a book on the case by Nina Burleigh.

Knox's younger sister, Deanna, dropped out of Western Washington University and began working to fund her trips. Knox's friend from the University of Washington, Madison Paxton, moved to Perugia, and several other UW classmates dropped in for periods of time.

Back in the United States, the Friends of Amanda collected about $80,000 in a series of fundraisers. Some people donated air miles. (Source)


Remember also that Knox has to pay a fine of 22,000 euros for slander.

Shame on you for bringing facts into a good story.
 

D_Tim McGnaw

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Oh, yeah, "well-funded":
Remember also that Knox has to pay a fine of 22,000 euros for slander.


And yet a spokesperson for the family last night on British TV news said they were an "average middle class family" and had been forced to leverage their "homes", plural.


I don't know about the US, but where I'm from average middle class families don't have multiple homes to leverage.

Which isn't to say that her family are therefore rich, they aren't, but they're hardly poor either. And by Italian standards they would be very comfortable indeed, because you can be sure the average middle class Italian couldn't afford to up sticks from Italy to spend enormous sums on their child's defence before US courts having leveraged their home, and they certainly wouldn't have multiple homes to re-mortgage either.
 
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deleted213967

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I just hope this means the media will move on to something else

Yes: her exclusive interview, her new book, her made-for-TV movie and the unveiling of her marketing partnership with Starbucks and Amazon.
 

Calboner

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And yet a spokesperson for the family last night on British TV news said they were an "average middle class family" and had been forced to leverage their "homes", plural.


I don't know about the US, but where I'm from average middle class families don't have multiple homes to leverage.
In the US, divorced couples generally maintain separate residences. I guess we're just weird that way.
 
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D_Tim McGnaw

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In the US, divorced couples generally maintain separate residences. I guess we're just weird that way.



Interesting, because I imagine the average Italian divorced couple would maintain one home between them while one partner either lived with family or rented separate accommodation to the former family home. Unless both partners were remarried, in which case their offspring would have the resources of 2 families to rely on in these circumstances and not just one.
 

SilverTrain

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Interesting, because I imagine the average Italian divorced couple would maintain one home between them while one partner either lived with family or rented separate accommodation to the former family home. Unless both partners were remarried, in which case their offspring would have the resources of 2 families to rely on in these circumstances and not just one.

You "imagine"?

Definitely in keeping with the rest of this judicial travesty.
 

SilverTrain

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Oh come on, it's purely a turn of phrase. I any event I agree that the prosecution of Amanda Knox was incompetent, but how is it a judicial travesty? She's out isn't she?

Listen, don't use your recently-ex-mod jedi mind tricks on me. :mad: :tongue:

It seems to have been a case that's been bungled from the start, progressing into out-and-out prosecutorial fucked-up-ed-ness. The whole thing is tainted. The prosecutions, the verdicts, the circus-like atmosphere. I feel quite sorry for the victim's family, as well as just about everyone else associated with the case.

The fact that so many have taken to using the whole affair as a launching pad for yank bashing is annoying and frustrating. Certainly there are more appropriate sources for that industry.
 

D_Tim McGnaw

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Listen, don't use your recently-ex-mod jedi mind tricks on me. :mad: :tongue:

It seems to have been a case that's been bungled from the start, progressing into out-and-out prosecutorial fucked-up-ed-ness. The whole thing is tainted. The prosecutions, the verdicts, the circus-like atmosphere. I feel quite sorry for the victim's family, as well as just about everyone else associated with the case.

The fact that so many have taken to using the whole affair as a launching pad for yank bashing is annoying and frustrating. Certainly there are more appropriate sources for that industry.



I agree with you, I think the Yank bashing aspect of the whole affair is pretty ugly. Even if she were undeniably guilty the entire American people are hardly responsible, and nor would she be representative of them.
 

Calboner

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This article seemed pretty persuasive to me:

"The scapegoating of Amanda Knox" by Nina Burleigh; Los Angeles Times, October 4, 2011

An excerpt:
After a few weeks in Perugia, I saw that there was something very wrong with the narrative of the murder that the authorities and the media were presenting. There was almost no material evidence linking Knox or her boyfriend to the murder, and no motive, while there was voluminous evidence — material and circumstantial — implicating a third person, a man, whose name one almost never read in accounts of the case. It became clear that it wasn't facts but Knox — her femaleness, her Americaness, her beauty — that was driving the case.

In person, in prison and in the media, Knox was subjected to all manner of outlandish, misogynistic behavior. A prison "doctor" (he has never stepped forward publicly) tested a sample of Knox's blood and then informed her she was HIV-positive, prompting Knox to list every man she'd had sex with. Authorities passed the names of seven men to reporters from the British tabloid pack, who printed it. Soon thereafter, Knox was told the doctor was mistaken and she didn't have AIDS.

Outside prison walls, Italian criminologists were opining in the media and eventually on the witness stand that because the body had been covered with a blanket, the killer was surely female because such an act was evidence of feminine "pieta."

Finally, there were the prosecution's operatic closing arguments, repeated almost verbatim in the appeal that ended last week. Knox was a "luciferina" — a she-devil — capable of a special, female duplicity. She was "dirty on the inside." Always, even from the defense lawyers, the closing arguments ended with appeals to God, in a medieval courtroom with a peeling fresco of the Madonna on the wall and a crucifix hanging above the judge. . . .

The young woman who first went to jail at age 20 was a cipher onto whose photogenic, smiling face some Italians could see the archetypal Madonna-whore and, in whose pale eyes, others saw a psychopath. She was arrested at a time and in a place where young sexually active women are endowed in the minds of grown men, and maybe women too, with propensities for fantastic adult kink that few possess. The gaunt, tense woman defending herself on appeal bore barely any resemblance to the fresh, pretty girl photographed kissing her boyfriend outside the murder scene. Only now, having lost the power to bewitch and beguile, has she been revealed as human — and also, apparently, not guilty of murder.
 
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