A few points on the Kercher murder case
The first thing that needs saying is that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito would have been found guilty in almost any court of law, and, if it comes to that, by almost any American jury. Their situation was desperate from the moment when the body of Amanda's house-sharer was found in their house, Amanda denied being there at the time - and was found to be lying. The fact that she then told a sequel of inconsistent stories, and that she and Sollecito fell out and came close to blaming each other, would have made any prosecutor, anywhere, more, much more, than suspicious.
That being the case, one thing that does not reflect well on Amanda is the unbelievable purblindness and denial of her family. To want to reassure and encourage one's daughter is one thing; to have bought an air ticket home (air tickets from Rome to Seattle don't come cheap) and programmed a party for the day of the sentence - when, apart from anything else, it was inevitable that if the prosecution had lost they would have immediately lodged an appeal - bespeaks collective delusion. The arrogant and self-righteous way the father behaved would have been bad enough in a man seized by a sudden shock, but these people had had two years to get used to the situation their daughter was in, and to let the chance sink in that she might be condemned. Even if she is innocent, the least that can be said of her is that she comes from a family of, to be kind, obstinate, self-blinded, denial-ridden idiots. And to my mind, that makes it slightly more rather than less likely that she is indeed guilty. If that degree of separation from reality is a family trait, then she would indeed be the kind who could take part in a murder in a drugged haze and then convince herself that it was none of her fault. Mind you, I said slightly more likely. It does not convince me one way or another. But the least that can be said is that the house of Knox has done Amanda Knox no favours.
Having said that, there are reasons to take the Italian prosecution to have been motivated by national prejudice. Specifically, there was a clear charge that Amanda was racist: apparently the prosecutors found it significant - or at least, they wanted the jury to find it significant - that the lies she told tended to implicate two black men, one of whom, Patrice Lumumba, turned out to be completely innocent. Now, to an untravelled Italian Seattle may be the same as Memphis, but I for one do not believe that Amanda, even if she suffered from prejudices, would have suffered from such obvious ones. Italians - I realized it to my surprise during the last presidential elections - are convinced that all white Americans are racists, and racists of the obvious, self-stated kind. Those of us who know America better would know that that is mostly nonsense, and that racial feeling, where it exists, often takes much subtler shapes. Someone from a liberal Seattle background would be much more apt, if she had any racial feeling, to burden blacks with well-meaning paternalism and a "tyranny of soft expectations." If any prejudice was in evidence during the trial, it was not that of any white American towards blacks, but of Italians, especially but not exclusively of the left, against white Americans.
However, that is on the whole a secondary factor. As I said, Amanda was likely to be found guilty in any court from the moment she told her first lie. And if my Italian contacts are typical, nothing did her so much harm as her relationship with Raffaele Sollecito. This is a kind of young man Italians, especially Italian women, instinctively dislike and distrust: someone from a good family and with a pleasing face who turns out to have weird and dangerous interests - in his case, knife collecting. It is my strong impression that the guilty verdict was more to do with him than with her, and that in spite of their break-up and separate defences, he brought her down with him.
What can anyone say? I suspect she is guilty; but nobody can know for certain, and in the absence of really convincing material evidence, the whole story has only served to remind us once again how inadequate our means are, even with the best will and the most advanced technology in the world, to find out certain truth.
That being the case, one thing that does not reflect well on Amanda is the unbelievable purblindness and denial of her family. To want to reassure and encourage one's daughter is one thing; to have bought an air ticket home (air tickets from Rome to Seattle don't come cheap) and programmed a party for the day of the sentence - when, apart from anything else, it was inevitable that if the prosecution had lost they would have immediately lodged an appeal - bespeaks collective delusion. The arrogant and self-righteous way the father behaved would have been bad enough in a man seized by a sudden shock, but these people had had two years to get used to the situation their daughter was in, and to let the chance sink in that she might be condemned. Even if she is innocent, the least that can be said of her is that she comes from a family of, to be kind, obstinate, self-blinded, denial-ridden idiots. And to my mind, that makes it slightly more rather than less likely that she is indeed guilty. If that degree of separation from reality is a family trait, then she would indeed be the kind who could take part in a murder in a drugged haze and then convince herself that it was none of her fault. Mind you, I said slightly more likely. It does not convince me one way or another. But the least that can be said is that the house of Knox has done Amanda Knox no favours.
Having said that, there are reasons to take the Italian prosecution to have been motivated by national prejudice. Specifically, there was a clear charge that Amanda was racist: apparently the prosecutors found it significant - or at least, they wanted the jury to find it significant - that the lies she told tended to implicate two black men, one of whom, Patrice Lumumba, turned out to be completely innocent. Now, to an untravelled Italian Seattle may be the same as Memphis, but I for one do not believe that Amanda, even if she suffered from prejudices, would have suffered from such obvious ones. Italians - I realized it to my surprise during the last presidential elections - are convinced that all white Americans are racists, and racists of the obvious, self-stated kind. Those of us who know America better would know that that is mostly nonsense, and that racial feeling, where it exists, often takes much subtler shapes. Someone from a liberal Seattle background would be much more apt, if she had any racial feeling, to burden blacks with well-meaning paternalism and a "tyranny of soft expectations." If any prejudice was in evidence during the trial, it was not that of any white American towards blacks, but of Italians, especially but not exclusively of the left, against white Americans.
However, that is on the whole a secondary factor. As I said, Amanda was likely to be found guilty in any court from the moment she told her first lie. And if my Italian contacts are typical, nothing did her so much harm as her relationship with Raffaele Sollecito. This is a kind of young man Italians, especially Italian women, instinctively dislike and distrust: someone from a good family and with a pleasing face who turns out to have weird and dangerous interests - in his case, knife collecting. It is my strong impression that the guilty verdict was more to do with him than with her, and that in spite of their break-up and separate defences, he brought her down with him.
What can anyone say? I suspect she is guilty; but nobody can know for certain, and in the absence of really convincing material evidence, the whole story has only served to remind us once again how inadequate our means are, even with the best will and the most advanced technology in the world, to find out certain truth.