Now that the verdict has been issued in the trial of Amanda
Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, it’s time to ask who – or what – was really on
trial in this mess.
For those who haven’t followed the story (in Italy, that
would be impossible), these are the two young sometimes-lovers convicted of
killing Amanda’s roommate, Meredith Kercher, in a sex game gone out of control
in Perugia, Italy. Amanda was an
American student from Seattle studying in Perugia. Raffaele was a local boy from an affluent Italian family,
and Meredith was an unfortunate British exchange student whose throat was cut
in a drama the chronology of which is still not clear, despite the trial.
I don’t read the “cronaca nera” (crime stories) in Italy, as a rule. But you couldn’t pick up a paper here without some reference
to this case for the same reasons that certain murders universally capture
public attention – a beautiful foreign defendant, a violent crime, sex, drugs,
even racism. (A third culprit, a young African named Rudy Guede, was convicted
of murder in a separate “fast track” trial last year, and sentenced to 30 years
in prison).
Despite the sensationalism, I didn’t follow the intricacies
of this case very closely. But as
the date of sentencing approached, I was curious to see how certain US and the
UK media were covering the trial. Not surprisingly, the coverage was markedly
different. The BBC – not the
British tabloids -- handled the story as you would expect the BBC to handle
it: dry, dispassionate,
objective. Never mind that the
victim was British, and her father a journalist: there was generally even-handed acknowledgement of a tragedy
in which the lives of four young people were intertwined. Yes, the BBC, like the Italian
and American media, focused more on Amanda than on Raffaele, partly because the
picture of a pretty girl is more compelling than that of a young man -- though Raffaele is rather pretty
himself. I wondered if Sollecito’s
family had used its influence and wealth to limit speculation about him in the
press, but, by and large, a
photogenic 22-year-old female defendant sells more newspapers than a
25-year-old male defendant, however photogenic. In general the BBC coverage
avoided the exclamation point! extremes in its reporting.
The US coverage in Seattle, where Amanda is from, was
emotional, and blatantly critical of the Italian judicial system. That was to be expected; Amanda’s
family obviously worked with the local media to influence their coverage, just
as Raffaele’s family appeared to have done with success here in Italy. What surprised me was when the New
York Times – among others -- published
articles blatantly critical of Italian justice, accusing it of engaging in a
superficial attempt to “save face” rather than discover the truth about a young
girl’s murder.
What rankled most about some of the stories in the Times was that they were penned by a reporter who is from
Seattle so has a natural bias towards the innocent-abroad portrayal of Amanda
Knox. True, Timothy Egan is a
prize-winning journalist and author, but he has never lived in Italy, doesn’t
speak Italian, and is no expert on the Italian legal system. If you live in Italy you know
that – surprise! – the process is different from Anglo-American courts. Trial by jury in this case meant two judges
and six Italian citizens, not 12 average Americans. Juries are not sequestered as they are in the US; that
is true for any trial, not just this one. Yes, jurors might be influenced by what they read in
the press or see on television, but American jurors are influenced exclusively
by the courtroom lawyers they see.
Rich defendants hire expensive lawyers, and they are more likely to be
acquitted. Yes, the Italian system
is cumbersome, slow, bureaucratic, and flawed, but to anyone who thinks things are
better in the US, I have only two words:
O.J. Simpson.
One of the comments in the blogosphere in the weekend after
the verdict was from an Englishman who lives in Italy. He wrote that if he were innocent of a
crime, he’d rather be tried in Italy than in the Anglo legal system, because he
would more likely get a fair break here. I don’t know if he is right, but I do think women get
more benefit of the doubt in Italy than they might in the US. When Amanda Knox claimed that she
was struck during interrogation, I found her claim hard to believe. Not that Italian police are paragons of
virtue, but when you are questioning a young woman of good family, an AMERICAN
studying in your city, a city whose economy demands heavily on foreign students
and certainly American students, you are going to be very careful in your
conduct. Her
accusation did not ring true.
Anyone who followed this case in the responsible Italian
press knows that there was solid evidence linking Knox and Sollecito to the
crime scene. US journalists
dissed some of that evidence and ignored the rest. It’s understandable that not all US crime reporters
are fluent in Italian or experts in Italian law, but that becomes their problem
in analyzing the verdict, not the problem of the Italian legal system in
formulating it. Again, I am not
going to defend the court system here in its entirety (reform is long overdue)
but rather emphasize that in this case the system worked more efficiently than
it usually does.
It’s a hard life, Knox, the 26 years you may (or may not,
depending on the complex Italian appeals process) spend in jail, but you did
get a fair trial in the courtroom, as good as anything you would have gotten in
the US. You may not like the
verdict but remember that you and Raffaele were on trial for murdering Meredith
Kercher. The Italian criminal
justice system was NOT on trial for indicting you.
###
Based in Italy, Claudia Flisi writes about business and culture
for the
International Herald Tribune and many other publications, and for
corporate clients ranging from Apple (computers) to Zegna (clothing). She can
be reached through her website at www.flisi.net. Her thoughts about European women and beauty are found
here: http://frenchfacelift.blogspot.com/ and about horse riding here: www.worldreviewer.com/member/claudia-flisi/
Posted
Dec 06 2009, 03:15 PM
by
Claudia Flisi