Knox Appeal: Judgment Day (Part 1)

PART 2

The day has finally arrived: the day that will decide the fate of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. The last session has already begun and is currently underway. Luciano Ghirga started off the proceedings today with his closing argument rebuttal. Ghirga spoke firmly to the court, declaring Knox’s innocence. Sollecito took the floor after Ghirga. He started off by saying that he would “…never hurt anybody.” Raffaele pleaded to the court to release him, telling mostly of the horror he has endured over the last few years.

“I’ve never met Rudy Guede before the trial,” he adamantly protested. Although he spoke freely today, he refused to testify and face cross-examination in this appeal or the original trial. Sollecito did not speak of the circumstances surrounding the murder or his involvement or lack thereof. He didn't spend any time talking about the details of his "innocence;" he only seemed to play the sympathy card and how horrible the last few years have been for him while in prison. He went as far back as meeting Knox, but then he skipped the details of where he was during the murder and went right to the police interrogation in his speech, which I believe is very telling on his part.

Moreover, he actually said:

“No one ever asked me to testify and I don’t know why. But I was ready to talk in front of you, in front of the court to explain any doubt, but nobody—not in this process [the appeal] or the previous one [the original trial] has asked my examination. So I am here, in a way, to say freely the facts, what I’ve gone through and who I am.”

This is a very strange statement to say the least, as he surely knows and was advised that he could take the stand, but refused. Wearing a “free Amanda & Raffaele” bracelet, Sollecito used symbolic, ritualistic theatrics, saying that he has never taking off the bracelet since he received it sometime ago. He said, “Now is the time to take it off,” and he did so as he closed out his plea for freedom. He also appeared very unemotional, and he even smirked once when he began talking about the “free Amanda & Raffaele” bracelet, as if he was making a profound statement or a bad joke.


Amanda Knox addressed the court immediately after Sollecito, at 4:30am Eastern Time in the United States. She stepped to the mic with no written speech; perhaps deciding to speak off-the-cuff; perhaps committing an earlier speech to memory. Speaking in fluent Italian, Knox addressed the court in a shaky voice, starting off by explaining that she was nervous. As she got rolling, her hand gestures became very animated. “I am not what they say I am: perversion, violence. I have not done the things they say I’ve done; I wasn’t there that night!” Amanda reiterated many of the things that she has said over the years. She said she was friends with Meredith; she wasn’t at the cottage during the night of the murder; she is innocent, etc.

“I want to go back home, I want to go back to my life. I am innocent; Raffaele is innocent; and we deserve to be free.”

Judge Hellman then warned the audience. “This is not a football game. There is no room for gossiping. We have to remember that a beautiful girl has died a horrible death and that the lives of two young people are in play. So when I am reading the verdict I want respect and silence.” Judge Hellman announced that he does not expect to return back with a verdict before 8pm local Perugia time (2pm eastern time U.S.). And with that, the judge informed that deliberation would start at that time: 4:41am.


There are four possible scenarios in regard to today’s outcome. It will take a majority vote of the six jurors and two judges to throw out the conviction. If they are evenly split, Knox and Sollecito will be free. The second is that the court could decide to uphold the conviction and reduce their sentences. Thirdly, the court could uphold the conviction and honor the prosecution’s request to increase Knox’s sentence to life in prison. Lastly, and in my opinion: the most likely; the court could choose to uphold Knox's original conviction and order her to serve the remaining 22 years of her sentence in Italy. Regardless of the outcome, either side could appeal the verdict to Italy's Supreme Court.

A press conference was then set up outside the courtroom, where the streets were filled with journalists and spectators. Sollecito’s lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno addressed the audience, continuing her declarations of innocence. No one knows what time that the verdict will be read. Even Bongiorno told the media that it is impossible to predict how long that the deliberation will be.

Knox and Sollecito were whisked away in a police van. They were brought back to prison to await the verdict. They will be notified when a decision is reached and brought back to the court to hear the reading.

PART 2

Mentally Ill in Perugia: Amanda Knox

The Amanda Knox apologists will stop at nothing to try and convince the world that she is nothing more than a victim of an ‘archaic Italian Justice system’ and an unstable prosecutor. In the latest attempt to do so, a recent TIME magazine article headline actually asked, Could Amanda Knox Have an Autism Spectrum Disorder? Aside from the author’s clear ignorance of the case against Knox, she actually entertains the idea that Knox may have suffered from Asperger’s syndrome—a less severe form of autism—that caused both her unusual social behavior and a gullibility that triggered a false confession.

The author cites Valerie Gaus, a psychologist who has worked with hundreds of autistic people and is the author of Living Well on the Spectrum. “Everything I read would be consistent with it and it could be one alternative theory for the behavior that made her seem suspicious,” says Gaus. The author appears to base her assertions on the behavior of Knox at the police station the day that Meredith’s body was discovered. Somehow, this Knox apologist has attempted to spin the statements of Meredith’s friends—who said that they all suspected Knox after her odd behavior—into a mental disorder that somehow ‘proves’ her innocence. It is uncanny how far these Knox apologists will stretch their minds to believing in her innocence.


Let’s revisit what Meredith’s boyfriend at the time of her death, Giacomo Silenzi (who lived in the apartment below), told Nick Pisa of the daily mail in November 2007. Giacomo suspected Knox was the killer long before it was made public that she was a suspect. In fact, it seemed to be a unanimous decision of all those who witnessed Knox and Sollecito at the police station the day that Meredith’s body was discovered. Does Sollecito also have this disorder?

“I couldn't help thinking how cool and calm Amanda was. Meredith’s other English friends were devastated and I was upset, but Amanda was as cool as anything and completely emotionless,” Giacomo said. “Her eyes didn’t seem to show any sadness and I remember wondering if she could have been involved. I spoke with her English friends Robyn [Butterworth] and Sophie [Purton] afterwards, and they said the same thing. None of us could quite understand how she was taking it all so calmly. I knew that Amanda didn’t get on with Meredith, but I didn't think that would lead to Amanda killing her…If I could see Amanda, I would just ask her, 'Why? Why did she kill Meredith?'”

Were all of these witnesses in on the “so called” conspiracy to convict Knox, was Knox simply suffering from a mental disorder that made her look completely guilty to all who witnessed, or are these just excuses made up in order to justify abnormal, speculative behavior?


Dr. Coline Covington, an experienced psychotherapist who has studied at Princeton University, Cambridge University and the London School of Economics, seems to have a very different diagnosis of Amanda Knox. In a December 2009 article, Dr. Covington suggested that Knox showed signs of being a psychopath:

“Knox’s narcissistic pleasure at catching the eye of the media and her apparent nonchalant attitude during most of the proceedings show the signs of a psychopathic personality. Her behaviour is hauntingly reminiscent of Eichmann’s arrogance during his trial for war crimes in Jerusalem in 1961 and most recently of Karadzic’s preening before the International Criminal Court at the Hague.

The psychopath is someone who has no concern or empathy for others, no awareness of right and wrong, and who takes extreme pleasure in having power over others. The psychopath has no moral conscience and therefore does not experience guilt or remorse.

Most psychopaths are highly skilled at fooling those around them that they are normal by imitating the emotions that are expected of them in different circumstances. They are consummate at charming people and convincing them they are in the right. It is only when they reveal a discrepancy in their emotional response that they let slip that something may be wrong with them.

The psychopath is the conman, or in the case of Amanda Knox, the con-woman par excellence. Her nickname ‘Foxy Knoxy’, given to her as a young girl for her skills at football, takes on a new meaning.

Whether or not Knox, who is appealing her verdict, is ultimately found guilty, her chilling performance remains an indictment against her. Her family’s disbelief in the outcome of the trial can only be double-edged.”

Then there is the analysis of Professor David Wilson, one of Britain’s leading criminologists and is the author of ‘A History of British Serial Killing, 1888-2008’. Dr. Wilson analyzed Knox’s confiscated diary at one point and gave his analysis in a video on Sky News (The video has since been removed). Thankfully, I had transcribed his comments word for word more than a year ago. In his anaylsis, Dr. Wilson said:

“I have absolutely no doubt that Amanda Knox is guilty of murder. I know there’s a great deal of speculation in relation to the evidence that has been presented in the Italian courts; that it was circumstantial. But actually, it was DNA evidence that linked her, quite clearly—incontrovertibly, to the crime. I’d also say, having read her prison diaries, that this is a woman who was clearly involved with an older more experienced boyfriend who introduced her to a lifestyle—it would seem—that allowed her to bend the rules of morality that would guide her behavior, perhaps, in the United States, so that her behavior was different in Italy."

"Because this case has gone on for some two years, very early on, after Amanda Knox’s arrest and imprisonment in Perugia, I was sent her diaries that she had been keeping whilst in jail, to analyze. Having gone through those diaries quite carefully and repeatedly, I would say that a woman emerged (a picture of a young woman emerged) who was self-obsessed, who showed a lack of remorse, who was enjoying the fame and notoriety (the infamy) that had been attached to her as a result of this crime. She enjoyed the sense in which other men in the public were finding her ‘Hot’ as she [Knox] would say. There was a great deal of grandiosity in these diaries. In other words that she sees herself as a bigger personality than she had hitherto been, and she was rather enjoying that behavior. I can give you an example that talks about that grandiosity.”

“She says for example:

‘I know this sounds babyish, but if anything in the world that is unfair, this would have to be up there; not that martyrs and things don’t take the cake, but I’m innocent too. And even though I haven’t been killed, I’m not being allowed to live either.’

“So there’s: (A) the sense of self-obsession; this is all about her—the person who is missing in those statements is of course Meredith Kercher—and (B) there’s also this grandiosity; this sense in which she equates herself to that of a martyr and being martyred by this process. For me what again comes through the diaries in these early phases after her arrest is the sense in which she is still under the spell of her ex-boyfriend. And I have no doubt that his participation in creating a world in which murder could be committed, was the dominant participation.”