Amanda Knox Update: Tabloid Justice
Apparently, Amanda Knox is still capable of being shocked. Four years after her roommate, Meredith Kercher, was slain in their apartment in Perugia, Italy, and two years after Knox and her boyfriend were convicted of the crime, the case against her still manages to slump further into absurdity and self-parody.
Knox's assertion of shock was in response to the testimony of a recent witness called by the prosecution. The witness, the Ivorian-born Rudy Guede, is serving a 16 year sentence for Meredith Kercher's murder, arrested in the course of a different investigation, and convicted by a different court under a different theory of the crime. Guede's story, affirmed again on the stand, is that he was with Kercher the night of her murder. They were on a date he says, and "kissing and touching," but the action was interrupted by a groan in Guede's stomach. He then supposedly retired to the bathroom, popped in his headphones, turned up his iPod, and attended to his aching bowels, over the sound of his music, he heard Knox and Kercher arguing, and a scream. According to his testimony, he returned from the bathroom just in time to see a mysterious man fleeing, who had just enough time to shout a racial comment before vanishing. He says he went to a window and saw Knox's silhouette leaving the house. Guede repeated this yarn on the stand (straight-faced, by all accounts), and pointed the finger at Knox and Sollecito. None of Guede's account explained physical evidence that he had sex with Kercher, or how his bloody hand-prints appeared under her body. Shocking indeed.
The prosecution called Guede to refute a witness the defense had summoned, Mario Alessi, one of the most despised men in Italy. Alessi is a prison comrade of Guede's. He's also doing time for murder, but in his case it was the murder of a small baby in a profoundly sociopathic and hare-brained kidnapping attempt. Alessi testified that Guede told him that Knox and Sollecito were innocent, the obvious implication being that Guede is the murderer. The Ivorian denied having confided in Alessi. The prosecution also brought in a chum and frequent visitor of Guede's to testify that he didn't think Guede and Alessi had discussed the case.
But Guede wasn't the only dubious star witness. The defense called convicted mobster Luciano Aviello to the stand with an entirely new tangent on the case. Italian organized crime figures are not known for their willingness to cooperate with authorities, but Aviello has appeared downright eager. With his career in crime over, the jailed mobster seems to have made a hobby out of volunteering himself as a witness for the government. Authorities in the mob stronghold of Naples have cast doubts on his reliability. Aviello claims that his fugitive brother is Kercher's killer, and that he helped him conceal evidence. The testimony was certainly colorful: there were mysterious Albanians, heists, and a hand-to-hand grapple, but Mr. Aviello's saga is a poor fit for the actual facts of the case. Knox's father even called him "funny." Still, it's a tantalizing tool for the defense to seize upon.
Any high-profile criminal case, particularly one that's hard-fought in court, draws out strange personalities. A seasoned investigator will tell you that a murder in the headlines brings out thousands of "tips" from a variety of charlatans, lunatics, and garden variety attention-seekers. What makes the Knox case unique is that the authorities seem to be indulging, or even courting these hangers-on. So how does the defense respond? by finding their own crackpots and cranks, of course. These are the wages of tabloid justice: anyone who wants to see his name in the paper, step right up, and tell us a story.
