Announcement from the court at 3:30 ET.
Perhaps you could clarify by posting something substantive. Or did you just come here to post a drive-by snark?
Live video here. According to the headline on Yahoo! News she “Wins appeal, will walk free.”
Yep, overturned the murder verdict for both her and her friend but upheld the defamation verdicts. She’ll be released immediately.
The murder conviction has been overturned, but she was found guilty of defamation and sentenced to three years, of which she’s done four, as it were. She’s being taken back to prison just to do the paperwork and collect her things. She’s also required to pay some or all of the court costs; not sure how that works.
Pretty much the same for her co-defendant as well.
I would spend the rest of my life being hard to find if I were her. Getting extradited back to Italy to get tried again would royally suck.
You meant to say “in my post”, right?
Not that I expect anyone to care about my opinion, but a couple of years ago, I assumed that Amanda was guilty, in large part because of her bizarre behavior after the murder, and because she tried to pin blame on her boss, who had an airtight alibi and was clearly NOT involved at all.
I assumed that an innocent person wouldn’t act that way and thought she had something to hide. After learning more about how her “confession”/accusation of her boss was arrived at, and the virtual absence of physical evidence OR any possible motive that makes a bit of sense, I think that I was wrong and that Amanda Knox was innocent all along.
It still seems like her actions helped put her behind bars (Life Lesson: When a suspect in a murder investigation, DON’T LIE TO THE COPS ABOUT ANYTHING, no matter how trivial) but I am glad that she will be set free, and hopeful that the victim’s family will in time learn to accept that it served no one’s interest to lock up an innocent party.
That sounds completely inane. 3 years of hard time for defamation seems like a way for the judges to whitewash any wrongdoing on their part.
I assume the court costs are for the defamation charges, since when do you pay for court costs after being cleared (unless you mean her lawyers’ fees)?
After reading about the Norfolk 4 cited above, I have had much less confidence in confessions acquired under duress. After reading about the Monster of Florence, I had absolutely no indication that the prosecutor was unbiased, or even sane.
There is circumstantial evidence that Amanda acted somewhat strangely but that is not evidence of murder. The evidence in this case shows that there was a man in the house who had sex with the victim that night, who left his DNA all over the scene and then fled the country.
Then there is the evidence against Amanda-that she told conflicting stories under interrogation, that she did not appear appropriately sad at her roommate’s death, and that she falsely accused her boss after prolonged interrogation without an attorney. The only “hard” evidence against her was a possible tiny speck of blood from her roommate on a knife that didn’t fit the wounds and the possible DNA of her boyfriend on a bra clasp that wasn’t processed until 46 days after the crime with no chain of custody. Both of these DNA fragments were parts of mixed DNA and were not isolated under currently accepted standards.
Certainly it is possible that she could have been involved but there just wasn’t any evidence to prove it. Combine this with no motive except an insanely bizarre one obviously concocted by the prosecution with absolutely no proof and there is no reason she should ever have been convicted.
Personally, I think that she is innocent. I think she and her boyfriend got stoned and had sex and I think that a lot of her contradictory statements were responses to what she at least thought were hypothetical scenarios. I also think that she has been more than punished enough for false accusations; the actual killer only got 16 years.
I only hope that she can rebuild some sort of a life and that her family makes enough money out of this to rebuild their savings a bit.
Finally, I personally feel that if Hitchcock was filming this, he would have cast his daughter Patricia as Meredith. JMHO.
So, no chance a dogged (or vindictive, or loony, take your pick) prosecution can order Knox held until an appeal to the highest court in Italy? She shouldn’t count her chickens till she’s out of the country.
From a statement just released by the victim’s family:
“We still trust the Italian judicial system and hope that the truth will eventually emerge.” :dubious::dubious::dubious::dubious::dubious:
I think she is already flying home as we speak.
She didn’t seem very eager to hang around for a final hearty farewell pasta and vino luncheon, did she?
I thought her passport had expired? Or is she high profile enough that the US Embassy was just like,
“Yeah, we know who you are, just get on the damn plane and never come back to this place.”
Embassies can issue temporary travel documents.
Capitaine Zombie, the defamation is because she accused someone of committing the murder who had not. He took her to court, and won.
It sounds like I either misunderstood or the report that I initially heard was wrong, as Amanda is apparently still in Italy, supposedly heading home tomorrow.
So, its finally over…
edit: So its not over yet…
I think he was referring to a seemingly excessive sentence for defamation. I had the same thought. With the scrutiny that the Italian judicial system is under, they couldn’t come right out and say, “We fucked the dog on this one. We’re sorry you lost 4 years of your life,” so they gave an exaggerated sentence for a minor offense as a way to wash their hands of the injustice, effectively trying to imply that she would have spent that time in prison anyway
Never mind that it was a BS charge to begin with seeing as how the Italian Supreme Court ruled that the stament in question was obtained during an interrogation that violated her civil rights and was inadmissable in the murder trial.
Then again, it’s just a hunch on my part and I don’t know what a typical sentence for slander/defamation is.
Yeah, that’s exactly what I was getting at. The French judicial system is notorious for putting people in jail for a long time before an actual trial happens. And in cases where the accused is then cleared, French judges do have a tendency to boost up accessory charges to make the unecessary jail time seem like legitimate. Looks like Italian judges might share the same bag of tricks.
That said, just from a cursory glance on a previous Knox thread that was focusing on the defamation charges, it seems that in Italy this could lead up to serious jail time, even without all the fuss of the Kox trial.
I think the Knox parents are still awaiting their own defamation trial.
++++1 to this post.
I find it amazing how whenever some high profile case comes up everyone becomes an “expert” in the case and in all things judicial. They read up some of the evidence and then form opinions on it, mostly based on how much they like the idea of her being innocent or guilty.
I’m not against having an opinion or debate on it, but if you’re going to have an opinion on it you have to know EVERYTHING about the case. You have to know all points of view and you have to have read about it for perhaps hours. That’s before you can possibly have an opinion.
Watching a few segments on the news, reading up on Wikipedia and reading a few articles does not entitle you to have an opinion of whether she did it or not.
Having opinions and passionately debating them can be great fun. But NOT in this instance when you don’t know all of the facts involved. Not based on things like the prosecutor’s past record, etc.