Anorak

Anorak News | Amanda Knox Will Flee To The US And Make The Black Man Pay: News Round Up

Amanda Knox Will Flee To The US And Make The Black Man Pay: News Round Up

by | 30th, September 2011

AMANDA Knox: Anorak’s at-a-glance look at the Meredith Kercher murder in the news:

America Or Bust

Speaking for the Kercher family, Giuliano Mignini told a Perugia courtroom during Knox’s appeal of her 26-year prison sentence that should she and her co-defendant, Raffaele Sollecito, Knox’s boyfriend at the time of the murder, be acquitted, there was “the risk of their flight abroad which would be impossible to remedy.” He accused Knox and Sollecito, 27, who also has been convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for the crime, of forming a trio with Rudy Guede, an immigrant casual laborer from the Ivory Coast now serving a 16-year sentence for the murder.

“They want us to believe that Rudy Guede, 21, is the only guilty one, but we don’t believe in fairy tales,” Mignini told the court. “This is a trio … two young people from good families and that poor unfortunate, abandoned by his father … who has to pay for all of them.” – LA Times

The Victim

The barman Amanda Knox falsely accused of murdering British student Meredith Kercher suffers nightmares as a result of her slander, his lawyer has said. American Knox, 24, is appealing against her conviction for the killing, which prosecutors claimed was the violent finale to a bungled sex game.

In his closing arguments, Carlo Pacelli blamed Knox’s false accusation for the recurring bad dreams his client Diya “Patrick” Lumumba keeps having. Knox pointed the finger at Mr Lumumba during a lengthy interrogation by police following the murder in Perugia, Italy. She later said she had made this statement only because of the pressure police were putting her under. In 2009 she was jailed for 26 years for the stabbing, in which she maintains she took no part. But referring to comments attributed to her after the discovery of Miss Kercher’s body, Mr Pacelli asked the court: “How could she have known that Meredith suffered a terrible agony?” In another attempt to erase any sympathy the judges and jury may have for Knox, the Kercher family’s lawyer contrasted her situation with that of his clients.

While the Kerchers are struggling to book a flight to Italy for the verdict, Knox has a private jet waiting to take her away, Francesco Maresca claimed. Miss Kercher’s mother, Arline, had also suffered ill health, he said. – PA

The Defence

• Defense lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova described Knox as an innocent girl who’s been “crucified” in the media and was wrongly convicted of killing her roommate. He urged the court not to be afraid to correct a mistake.
• Dalla Vedova said the conviction has “swept away her life,” adding that Knox had been hit by “a tsunami, a tornado.” – King 5

The American Experts

Retired FBI agent Steve Moore has kept close tabs on the investigation into the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher from the very beginning. He’s done his own probing, and has followed the court cases closely.
Initially, Moore thought Amanda Knox was guilty, but when he began digging into the evidence, he changed his mind.

“My initial belief that she was guilty was simply my confidence in fellow officers around the world,” he tells “The Early Show.” “If they said she was guilty and if they said they had the knife and if they said she bought bleach, then obviously, the evidence was there.”

“When I looked at the evidence, when I saw the crime scene and realized no bleach had ever been used to clean that crime scene, when I saw that the knife was too big to have inflicted the wounds they say it inflicted, and then I knew that the prosecutor was still saying these things when he had to know they were false, I knew there was something seriously wrong with this case.”

Upon gaining access to the evidence, Moore says he thought Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, should have been eliminated as suspects from the beginning of the investigation by the prosecutor.
Moore says, “They should have been eliminated on day one, but on day five, before the physical evidence came back, the prosecutor had already decided, ‘These must be the people, because I know these things intuitively.’ That would be like you walking into a doctor with a pain in your chest and him saying, ‘I need no tests, I know that you have indigestion.’ You would want more investigation than that. And so, what he did is he arrested them. The tests came back and it was completely opposite what he thought, but he wouldn’t back down. That’s why we’re here four years later.” – CBS

The Parents’ Media Drive

To use the theory of the prosecution; four people inside a very small room, one person fighting for their life, three people, I’m sure their adrenaline is running, and for Amanda and Raffaele to leave nothing in that room,” Amanda’s father, Curt Knox told Matt Lauer in an interview with the Today show on Friday.

“No hair, no blood, no saliva, nothing, no fingerprints, anything. It’s physically impossible to take place. And to me, that is just pure common sense.”

“It’s actually going to be very painful to listen to,” Curt said. “She’s literally fighting for her life.

“Amanda really hasn’t showed a lot of emotion to them. She’s been fairly stoic herself. Especially when… assaulting her character, she winced at things being said about her that are just so untrue.”

It was evident in the interview that Amanda’s mother, Edda Mellas, feels great sympathy for her daughter and hopes that by making a statement in court, it will help to vindicate her.

“She’s totally terrified by what’s happening to her and the fact that this is important that she get up and try to say exactly what she’s feeling and thinking,” Edda said. – Radar Online

Cynthia Sommer

On this final day of arguments in the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito appeals trial, a lot of Americans may be wondering how a case built on such circumstantial evidence might have come this far. Certainly in the United States no one could be convicted based on what appears to be less of a assessment of facts than an indictment of character. That, unfortunately, is simply not the case. And one need not look back far in American judicial history to find an example of such.

In January of 2007 Cynthia Sommer was convicted of killing her husband, a United States Marine, by poisoning him with arsenic. Sommer, a 34-year-old pretty brunette, was older than Knox, but in had many of her same traits.

After Sommer’s husband died unexpectedly, Sommer wasted little time in getting breast implants, having wild parties at her house, and having sex with other men. It didn’t take long for people to notice that she simply didn’t fit the bill of grieving widow.

Enter San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis–an aggressive and ambitious prosecutor looking to make a name for herself. She used Sommer’s promiscuous behavior and attention seeking nature as a prime point in her attack on the woman’s values.
And while Dumanis wasn’t able to use the kind of colorful language that’s been used in Knox case, the technique worked, and Sommer was convicted of murder.

Nearly a year later, however, with Sommer coming to her appeals trial day from a prison cell, it was proved that the Marine hadn’t died of poisoning after all and his wife hadn’t killed him.

When Sommer got out of prison she more or less went back to her flamboyant ways. But being flamboyant and/or promiscuous isn’t illegal. And when Sommer walked free the legal structure in San Diego County took one in the chin–but justice was served. – Seattle Weekly

Timeline:

2007
September – Amanda Knox arrived in Perugia, where she moves into a house with Meredith Kercher, a 20-year-old exchange student from Surrey.
1 November – Bar owner, Patrick Lumumba, cancels Knox’s shift at his bar, Le Chic. Between 9pm and 11pm Kercher is murdered. Knox says that she met boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito that night.
2 November – Sollecito and Knox say Kercher is missing but police break down Kercher’s bedroom door. They find her half-naked with a stab wound in her throat.
4 November – A post-mortem examination shows that there was sexual activity before Kercher died.
6 November – Knox, Sollecito and Lumumba are arrested
19 November – Rudy Hermann Guede, a drug dealer, is also named as a suspect. Lumumba is released.
22 November – Guede admits being in the house on the night of the murder.
30 November – Knox and Sollecito are denied bail.
14 December – Meredith Kercher is buried back in Britain.
2008
11 January – It is revealed that police found traces of a bloody footprint in Knox’s bedroom.
1 April – Knox, Sollecito and Guede lose their appeals to be released.
9 September – Guede opts for a fast-track trial.
28 October – Guede is sentenced to 30 years for murder. A vaginal swab taken from Kercher had matched his DNA. He admitted to police that he had engaged in sexual relations with Kercher, but claimed that someone killed her while he was in the bathroom.
2009
16 January – Sollecito’s and Knox’s murder trial begins.
6 March – Lumumba sues Knox for libel for £462,000

12 June – Knox claims that she was at Sollecito’s house as her alibi. She claims that police interrogators pressured her and hit her in the head during interrogations – a claim that officials denied.
4 December – Knox and Sollecito are convicted. Knox is sentenced to 26 years and Sollecito to 25 years after they are found guilty of murdering Kercher.
2010
24 November – Knox and Sollecito’s appeal against their convictions starts.
2011
29 June – Forensic specialists tell the court that DNA evidence linking Knox to the alleged murder weapon is unsound, giving a boost to her appeal. They agree Knox’s DNA was present on the knife handle, but tests for Kercher’s DNA were unreliable.
25 July – Two forensic experts tell the court that the suspected murder weapon may have been contaminated with other DNA traces.
5 September – Prosecutors defend the DNA tests. Kercher’s sister urges people to “please remember our beautiful Meredith.”
26 September – Patrick Lumumba’s lawyer calls Knox a “she-devil”. Knox said that she wrongly implicated Lumumba because of police pressure.
29 September – Wrapping up the defence case, Knox’s lawyer urges the jury to look beyond the media image of Knox.



Posted: 30th, September 2011 | In: Reviews Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink