My interest in the murder trial of Amanda Knox began not with the news or in the blogosphere, but with a conversation I had with a complete stranger in a London coffee shop. The bespectacled man of approximately twice my years asked in an American accent if I had been following the case of Meredith Kercher, the British exchange student tragically raped and murdered in Perugia a year prior. I responded I had been following the reports a little but could not recall the exact details of the case. The American, it turns out, was interested in gauging the British public’s attitudes towards Knox, to which I responded the general consensus was foggy but she appeared to be guilty.

Speaking from behind his laptop, the American stranger directed me to a fresh opinion article written in the New York Times by well-respected journalist Timothy Egan, to which I have linked at the bottom of this post. The article was far different to any evaluation of the case I had previously heard. Egan took issue with the zeal of prosecution magistrate Giuliano Mignini, whose determination to establish the case as a drug-fuelled orgy with tragic consequences became a “recurring obsession”. To Egan, Mignini was a prosecutor obsessed with solving sensational crimes to further his career. At the time, this went largely against public attitudes towards Knox and the comments section of the article was filled with substantial outrage and lengthy responses. I myself was sceptical. It sounded much like an American patriot defending his own daughter – incidentally, Egan’s daughter was in fact studying in Italy at the time and complained herself of negative Italian attitudes to all female American students during the trial. As time has passed however, the chief concerns raised by Egan have become more acceptable and widespread and I shall admit now I have come to share them myself.

More4 last night aired a documentary entitled The Trial of Amanda Knox, in which the significant details of the case, including forensic evidence and extracts from Amanda’s prison diaries, were combined with testimony from journalists, Knox’s family and friends to build a picture of the trial. It largely restated the points expressed by Egan’s article, confirming a more sceptical attitude to the case in the public domain. The bra clasp supposedly holding the DNA of Amanda’s new lover Raffaele Sollecito – also convicted – we learn was not retrieved from the scene until six weeks after the murder had taken place, leaving the enormous possibility of contamination. Additionally, the knife found at Sollecito’s apartment was found not to match both wounds on the body of Meredith Kercher – a detail the prosecution avoided by proposing the existence of a second, as yet undiscovered, knife. Amanda’s confused statements under questioning and slander of Patrick Lumumba are now considered to be statements given in broken Italian under overly-intense questioning without the presence of a lawyer.

Perhaps strangest of all, a man had already been convicted for the murder before Amanda and Sollecito’s trial even began, raising questions as to why the prosecution demanded more from the case. The DNA of Rudy Guede, a drifter, was discovered in Meredith’s body, making him the only person linked unquestionably to the crime. Guede, who agreed to a fast-track trial, at first claimed he had indeed been in the house, but had returned from Meredith’s bathroom to find another man standing over her wielding a knife. This story later changed to Mignini’s version of events: that this was a sex game and Sollecito had held the knife. In the trial however, it is oddly Amanda who has been prosecuted for killing Meredith with a knife, demonstrating an obsessive desire on the part of the prosecution to convict her.

From an outsider’s perspective, the entire case is marred by shoddy police work, conflicting testimonies and unsubstantiated claims. The constant police leaks and negative press surrounding Amanda’s provocative online identity were surely enough to throw the case into disrepute yet they unwaveringly pressed toward a guilty verdict. I find it surprising that they would not move the trial to an area less affected by publicity and negative press. Indeed, the stoical retention of the case by the Perugian authorities clearly supports a harmful emphasis on honour in Italian trials. As an unfortunate result of the case’s handling, it is now, in my opinion, impossible to ascertain the true guilt or innocence of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. There are certainly things in this trial that do not add up and need to be explained coherently, especially as the lives of two young individuals are in the balance, and until a truly cohesive account of the events of that night can be presented, the likelihood that suspicions will dissipate remains slim.

“An innocent abroad” – Timothy Egan