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Amanda Knox: Free, Conviction Overturned

By Art Harris, The Bald Truth, © www.artharris.com, all rights reserved

With Amanda Knox’s murder conviction reversed, as the appeals court cited faulty DNA evidence, and reports emerged of her prosecutor under fire for misconduct in other cases, it made me wonder if a tough American lawyer I watched tangle with Italian justice a few years back might have made a difference.

Had Gloria Allred been willing or able to take on Amanda Knox’s cause, might her media librettos have raised enough hell to expose Italy’s judicial dysfunction as she did after the murder of a California woman caught in its macho of indifference?

She made a small dent five years ago, but it was too late for Toni Dykstra.

Here’s what I remember:

It was 7 AM on the last Friday in September when the gray Lancia rolls down Via Sistina and pulls up to the five-star InterContinental hotel. Rome is waking up to the aroma of rich espresso laced with exhaust fumes and to the furies of an American feminist lawyer on a mission. Read the rest of this entry »

Amanda Knox Verdict Reversed

By Art Harris, The Bald Truth, (c) www.artharris.com, all rights reserved

Amanda Knox was acquitted today of a murder in Italy that gripped Americans, putting Italian justice on trial as its court of appeals threw out her earlier conviction, ruling contaminated DNA evidence had wrongly put her behind bars for four years.

As the judge in Perugia, Italy announced she was free, she seemed to slump in shock, as the appeals court dismissed a 26 year prison sentence that went along with the conviction for the murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher.

Knox insisted she was innocent, said Italian police had twisted her statements during 50 hours of grueling and virtually framed her and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, for slashing the throat of a fellow student who had treated her kindly. Read the rest of this entry »