Amanda Knox returned to Italy years after her harrowing murder case. Here's why.

[brooklynite]

The Lily

Amanda Knox’s life was upended during her time studying abroad in Perugia, Italy. In 2009, she and her boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, were first convicted of the 2007 murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, in a sensational case that captivated the public for years. Knox spent four years in prison before an appeals court overturned her sentence in 2011, whereupon she returned to the United States. In 2015, their convictions were overturned by Italy’s highest appeals court, which said that there was no evidence that she had committed the crime.

She returned to Italy on Thursday for the first time since she was freed from prison there. Knox agreed to speak at the Criminal Justice Festival’s “Trial by Media” panel in Modena on Saturday, the latest step in her long journey back to public life.

“Amanda Knox is the icon of trials that the media carry out before the trial in court is conducted,” one of the festival organizers, Guido Sola, told CNN. “Amanda has been definitively acquitted in court, but in the popular imagination she is still guilty because she has been the victim of a barbaric media trial.”

Rudy Guede, another suspect who was later convicted of Kercher’s murder, is serving a 16-year sentence, the Associated Press reported.

[Pachamama]

1. Is she really safe returning to Italy? I recall that there was a risk of being arrested and charged

...again because of loopholes in the way the legal court system is set up in Italy.

Curious about that...I just never thought she would take the chance to return...

Fascinating trial and story....

[pnwmom]

2. The haters still think she's guilty. But her case already went to the highest court in Italy

where they said she was innocent (not just not-guilty). And then it went to the European Court of Human Rights, which fined Italy for not giving her a fair trial.

[Pachamama]

3. I did not know that had happened, particularly the European Court of Human Rights

I never thought she was guilty and was outraged about the whole case and trial against her and her boyfriend and the way the Prosecutor went after her and his and the media portrayal of her as the sex crazed American student.

I also read a fascinating book years ago that was not related to her and was about the Prosecutor in another case. That Prosecutor was obsessed with satanic issues and really was not for Justice, but for revenge and being right.

Edit to post:

The prosecutor was Giuliani Mignini....

The case I read about was the famous "Monster of Florence" murders and then the later arrest and what Mignini tried to do to American Author Doug Preston....

[pnwmom]

4. More about the European Court of Human Rights decision here:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/24/european-court-to-rule-on-amanda-knoxs-remaining-conviction-meredith-kercher-italy

The European court of human rights has ordered Italy to pay Amanda Knox €18,400 for police failures to provide her access to a lawyer and a translator during questioning over the 2007 killing of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in Perugia.

The ruling opens the way for Knox’s lawyers to challenge her last remaining conviction, for malicious accusation, in the Italian courts.

The court, in Strasbourg, declared that Italy must pay Knox €10,400 in damages plus €8,000 to cover costs and expenses.

As well as concluding authorities had twice violated her right to a fair trial, the ECHR also found they had failed to investigate her complaints she had been subjected to degrading treatment, including being slapped on the head and deprived of sleep. The court did not, however, uphold her complaint of ill-treatment.

[BigmanPigman]

5. I read all of that too.

I heard her speak about it and the prosecutor is superstitious, Catholic nut case who, as you said, had an agenda. If I were her I'd never go back there either...I don't trust that guy's influence.

[smirkymonkey]

7. I read a few books about the case and he was bat-shit crazy. He pulled the whole sex-orgy-murder

scenario thing out of his ass. Completely fabricated the whole thing with no evidence other than what was going on in his warped little Catholic mind. I really hope she knows what she is doing by going back there. I am very afraid for her. I would like to see her put all of this behind her and move on with her life, but maybe she needs to go back to do this.

[dhill926]

6. fascinating book...

[eppur_se_muova]

8. "Monster of Florence" was an excellent book. I read it after the Knox trial, and it was eye-opening.

In one trial, the case was passed from one prosecutor to another for the final phase of the trial (standard practice in Italian courts). The second prosecutor basically destroyed the case; defense found it unnecessary to make a statement.

I say *one* trial because there were several people charged, singly or otherwise, at various times; some were even charged after another "culprit" had been convicted.