Amanda Knox Update: Return of the Inquisition

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito's appeal of their conviction of the murder of Meredith Kercher is almost certainly in its final days. According to legal experts, and reporters who've watched the trial with unblinking attention, the prosecution rests with their case in tatters. Even members of the prosecution team are predicting acquittal, but they are certainly not quietly accepting defeat. After the beating their (already dubious) DNA evidence took at the hands of defense experts, prosecutors have had no choice but to return to the familiar line that Knox must be guilty because she is an immoral woman. Just yesterday, a lawyer arguing against Knox talked himself into headlines worldwide by calling Knox a "she-devil."

These character attacks may seem like an act of desperation, but Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini's impression of Knox as an immoral woman was a large part of what drove him to investigate her. To the traditionalist Catholic Mignini, there is good reason to be suspect of a woman who didn't seem appropriately hysterical in the face of a tragic murder, who drank beer and smoked marijuana, and who didn't seem ashamed of the fact that she slept with her boyfriend and kept a vibrator and condoms in her house. For a college student in the 21st century, this doesn't even qualify as unusual, not to mention suspicious, but to hear the prosecution tell it, it's almost obvious that such a person would be capable of murdering a friend in cold blood.

It would be an oversimplification to say that Amanda Knox is on trial because an old, male, fundamentalist Catholic prosecutor weighed her morals and found her wanting, but the truth is not far off. It's hard to imagine the trial taking on the ugly overtones of a witch hunt, or the tabloid image of "Foxy Knoxy: cold blooded, erotic murderer" becoming so prevalent without Mignini's medieval views of sex and womanhood (and obsession with conspiracies and the occult) at the center of the case. Regardless of guilt or innocence, it remains baffling that Knox's treatment by the authorities and the media hasn't become a feminist issue.

Meredith Kercher was a vivacious, intelligent woman brutally cut down at the cusp of her adult life. When we're presented with such a tragic crime, there is always the temptation to seek comfort in a narrative that gives meaning to something so distressingly wasteful and senseless. For those struck by Ms. Kercher's death, it may be easier to think of her as a martyr- killed by someone as evil as Kercher was good, just because she disapproved of wanton sex, drugs and partying. Others may have found it gratifying to see a citizen of Bush's America, the America of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, treated sternly by a foreign court, or to see a privileged white woman go down for the crime she pinned on an up-by-his-bootstraps, black immigrant. Unfortunately, no matter how hard we try to force it, reality does not readily surrender such neat, easy conclusions. Amanda Knox is not the villain of a morality tale, or some totem of Yankee imperialism or white privilege, she is a real person, and though it may be painful for some of us to recognize, it looks less and less like she committed the murder. Criminals do not take narrative into account when they act. Investigators and reporters shouldn't either.