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The Knox Trial Endgame
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As closing arguments began, prosecutors described accused murderess Amanda Knox as a sex-and-drug-crazed sociopath while tears streamed down her face.
Amanda Knox is finally facing her moment of truth. The Seattle native spent Friday listening to Perugian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini lucidly describe how he believes she and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito schemed to violently assault and kill Knox’s roommate, Meredith Kercher, in November 2007.
Mignini painted a picture of Knox as a woman who often brought strange men to the house the girls shared, and who didn’t care about the feelings of others. “It is easy to imagine Amanda, with her sexual confidence, insulting the more reserved Meredith,” he told the jury. “Amanda was in charge. She plunged the knife into the side of her neck with the intention of killing her friend.”
“You can imagine Amanda telling Meredith, ‘You act like such a saint, now you are going to have sex with us.’”
The closing arguments summed up an 11-month trial that has at times seemed like a reality-TV show. Mignini spent over seven hours outlining the various aspects of Kercher’s brutal murder. He reconstructed the scenario in great detail, at one time describing the sound of dry leaves crunching underfoot as the murderers ran from the crime scene. He talked about Knox’s relationship with Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast man who has already been convicted for his part in Kercher’s murder, and he explained to the jury that Guede had a romantic interest in Knox. Mignini also told the jury how Knox controlled Sollecito, the “ever present” boyfriend who did anything Knox told him to.
The defense team was not allowed to interrupt or object during the closing arguments, and Knox stared straight ahead, tears streaming down her face. During a brief break, she broke down and wept as she left the courtroom. Her lawyers held her hand and hugged her. “She has been in prison for two years,” her attorney Carlo Dalla Vedova said after the hearing. “What do you expect?”
Mignini’s closing arguments focused not only on Knox’s alleged guilt in the murder, but on her dominance over Sollecito and Guede. The prosecutor also recounted the other charges against her, including staging a crime scene, which he believes is proof of Knox's involvement. He described a bedroom in the back of the house the girls shared where a window had been broken with a large rock, as he described, “to create the illusion of a break-in the night of the murder.” Mignini tried to transport the jurors into the house through visual images and provocative suggestions. “The key to this mystery lies in the bedroom of Filomena Romanelli,” another tenant in the house, he told the jury. “The window was broken from the inside, not the outside. The glass was on top of the clothes that had been strewn around the room, not under them. The break-in was staged and Knox is the one who did it.”
He also hinted that Knox and Sollecito might have been in a drug-fueled frenzy when they allegedly killed Kercher. He outlined the effects of cocaine and acid, and told the judges and jury how Knox and Sollecito ran with a crowd that often used these “stupificante,” or stupefying drugs. At one point, he hypothesized about the dialogue that might have taken place. "You can imagine Amanda telling Meredith, 'You act like such a saint, now you are going to have sex with us.'"
He also raised points about Knox’s strange behavior after Kercher's body was found, how she “didn’t lift a finger” to help the police until she had been called in for questioning. At times he raised his voice and asked the jury questions. He talked about how when Knox returned to her home the morning after the crime, she took a shower even though there were traces of blood in the bathroom. “Is this normal?” he asked the jury, waving his papers. “Why would anyone do that?”
When explaining his theory of the murder dynamic, he raised his hand as if to wield a knife while describing how he believed Knox plunged it into Kercher’s neck. Then he described Kercher as a woman full of life and potential, “the young woman we too often forget.” Mignini quoted Kercher’s father John on a number of occasions, especially when explaining that she was a strong woman who practiced karate and who would have fought back against an attack. The courtroom was silent as he recalled the words of Kercher’s father: “Meredith would have fought with all her life.”
Mignini also worked to legitimize some of the more questionable witnesses in the case that the defense had successfully discounted. He described an Albanian witness’ use of Italian as commendable under pressure. He explained that a homeless man who had seen Knox and Sollecito together lived that way by choice and that he was an educated man who was “extremely credible.” Tomorrow the prosecution will conclude closing arguments; lawyers for Sollecito and Knox will give their closings starting November 30. The case is expected to go to the jury on December 4, with a decision coming back within a day or two.
Knox’s attorney, Dalla Vedova, discounted the prosecution’s version of events as suggestive. Luca Maori, attorney for Sollecito, called it “a melodrama.” In fact, at times Mignini talked about the details of Kercher’s death as if he were describing a book he had just read. Soon it will be up to the jury to decide whether Mignini’s story is fiction or nonfiction.
Barbie Latza Nadeau has reported from Italy for Newsweek magazine since 1997. She also writes for CNN Traveller, Budget Travel magazine and Frommer's.
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hectormalloy
This case is a joke!
Sajwert
The story Mignini gives is almost as riveting as the defense was for OJ. It reads like a relatively well written mystery story by a first time writer. However, it also sounds very much like Mr. Mignini has elaborated in such a way that the defense doesn't have much room to refute his statement.
This is a terrible mess, and should give parents who let their chilren go overseas to attend college, some hesitation. I realize that a parent cannot control or watch over their children forever, but this situation would certainly make me wary.
wiseone
The prosecutor summed up his case according to the evidence presented. Of course he has to elaborate and connect the dots, but again the evidence is clear. It's quite possible that Amanda Knox was overwhelmed with the excitement of being abroad, but I believe her behavior was obvious earlier in her life. Even with appropriate parenting a child begins to develop their own set of rules. With what has been given to us by the media in the last two years, my opinion says; guilty for Knox and Sollecito. It would be interesting to know what other evidence was presented to give the fast-track judges a 30-year sentence to Rudy Guede. Was Guede actually in the bath-room when the murder occurred? Did he try to place towels around Kerchers neck to stop the bleeding as he stated in his appeal? I'm afraid the truth may never be known, not due to a lack of evidence, but because of who Rudy is.
AnnaDG
I agree that it is a joke. Is this a court seeking probable cause? Or is it: let's find a shred of "could be" or "this doesn't prove innocence". The prosecution is taking a "guilty until proven innocent" stance, obsessively so.
natalia09
this trial has been going on for years now, hopefully justice will be done and Kercher could rest in peace
johnwr3
Political prisoner?
kscr14
How can a trial go on this long?
jimbolini
Damn where is Johnny Cochran and the dream team when you need them???
Granite
CRAZY EYES!
ICHINGtoGO
She appears a Mansonette. Crazy eyes indeed.
Dochennessy
The case has been spiced with the distinguishing features shown by Knox's family, of bullying; rather exactly the same way as what Knox herself shows & does, even when trying to defend herself, she dictates, rather than elaborates.
That's it, plenty of little Hitlerians in the world, and in this, Knox is just a hater (there are reasons to be hateful in life and they stem from a lack of love and grounding in life) and a person who needed help, most obviously, but, if she herself was not in denial before leaving America, her parents certainly have been.
To be a compassionate person is not to sloganeer and parade around shouting love n peace while slapping people around, whether verbally, emotionally or/and physically.
Knox has been a young adult that has been suffering with an extreme form of identity crisis, she was not grounded, and that is why she took to proving herself, even amongst the boys, to an extreme degree.
What it disguises is that instead of her being the self-assured person she pretends to be or tries to be, she is, in fact, internally, someone with huge problems, where she has low self-esteem, and no matter what her family did, to try to show love, she took on the wrong messages (many from them), because of wrong signals within her upbringing, where mother brought an abusive man into the home, who was unkind to Knox and we know this, we who have followed the case every day for the past two years, we know her step-father is an abusive man because he has been online, and we have proof of this, online abusing people, shouting them down, giving false information.
All types of behaviour that do not belong to a person who is family of someone who is trying to say or prove that they are gentle & kind.
To carry on the abuse (extreme abuse is what killed Meredith), instead of dis-quieten it by showing good and respectful behaviour is a pointer to how Knox could be such a disturbed young woman.
It is not all the step-father's fault, but he had shown that he had been trying to take the role of a real father but in a forced and it seems, unnecessary way, by being authoritarian when he was just a few years and a few years only, older than Knox herself.
If there is something wrong with Knox and there most definitely is, then there is equally something wrong with that aggressive, foul-mouthed step-father who would spend his time going online and trying then to force people to abandon their own common sense and opinions, and if people did not do that, then he thoroughly ridiculed, derided, cussed, cursed and belittled them.
If Knox had an inferiority complex, that partly was a main ingredient in her becoming a murderer without a conscience, then the disease of the brainwaves started in that dysfunctional family in Seattle.
You cannot judge a book by its cover and Italian justice has given a clear and thorough reading of the book that is Knox and is Sollecito and is Guede.
May they serve their time and think about what pain they have caused with their self-conceited, selfish, and cruel acts.
No peace for the wicked
loloo33
what is this? are you a judge? you sounded likme somebody who was there and saw everything and judging her because of her dysfunctional family. Everybody has dysfunctional family, nobody is grwing up as a happy child, but that shou'dn't be a key factor for somebody to be a murderer. At the end, she might or she might not, but it bothers me that you already pointed that she is guilty, who are you to say this?
piktor
loloo -- There are compelling theories for and against a guilty verdict. I sense from the information made available here by Ms. Latza Nadeau and from other internet sites that both Knox and Sollecito will be found guilty. That does not mean they are actually guilty but "have been found" guilty in a fair trial. That's how the story reads out in my mind. The two accused will argue innocence to the last day but there has to be some closure for the family of the victim. Several judges prior to this trial have reviewed the case and found merits for trial, meaning there is evidence to point to culpability for the accused. The victim's parents also have reviewed the case and think the two accused are guilty.
Did Knox/Sollecito "do it"? The prosecution's story is improbable but then, all murders are improbable and they happen, regardless.
Shiga66
Knox has signs and symptoms of a personality disorder. I would guess a histrionic personality disorder. Knox isn't the only one with behavioral problems, Raffaele Sollecito seems to appear to have a myriad of behavioral problems as well. Ditto with Rudy Guede.
writerforhire
The statements made by the prosecutor are very similar to the facts surrounding the Hudson County Cover-up of Victim X case.
The cover-up was aided by the belief that females "fuck up" to secure futures and that attorneys are the pinnacle of every young girls dream.
The law firm involved had stalked the female over the course of her employment and then partnered with her church. The two organizations imagined a fate far different then what they have been served and her fate, worse in her death. As the plan would have had Victim X committing suicide and then being blamed (as the dead don't talk) for the series of unsolved pedophile cases in Westchester and New Jersey committed allegedly by members of both organizations.
Crime, of course, built alliances and secured a belief of commitment to the cause.
Amanda Knox will go to jail for the events of that night. Be it true, false or inaccurate.
speekup
Mignini says we can "easily" imagine Amanda Knox killing Meredith Kercher. On the contrary I think it is almost impossible to imagine any of it, but the evidence, both forensic and circumstantial, as well as analysis of what is known and filling in the gaps of what isn't known, leads a logical mind to conclude that she did indeed do it. A sad loss of, probably, four young lives is the result.
shoshido
I have yet to see anything to convince me that Knox or her boyfriend ever killed anyone. The Italians made a mess of this, and are making it worse with demonstrably false testimonies. A shameful indictment of their incompetence.
jomama
I'm amazed at all of these commenters who feel as though from reading media reports they can tell whether or not Amanda Knox has some kind of 'personality disorder' - especially when the rest of us are reading the same stuff and even medical experts have a very difficult time with that. Yes, her behavior does seem a little strange but for god's sake - she's in foreign land in a 2 year murder trial!! Hey - Occam's Razor - Randy Guede was clearly there and guilty, and he's in jail, why drag these other 2 kids into it with some rediculous story about sex and gang rape? Rationally, they must let them go, for heavens sake this is rediculous.
Saleiri
Murderer or not......she's awfully cute
SyncopatedAstrid
It would be nice if the piece explained where all this was happening. Maybe use a dateline? I had to visit to Google News to find out.
Barbara416
The girl is semi doomed. She'll get 8 to ten years and then be released. Remember Terry Broome?
timeflies
A kangaroo court.
Good reminder to Americans traveling or living outside the U.S. that other countries operate judicially in another world from ours.
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