Law & Disorder

by Douglas, John

  “Ten days in was when I realized it was not going to clear up and [Amanda and her family] were in a heap of trouble. So I called Edda and dove in with both feet.”

  Judge Michael Heavey, whose daughter Shana was another of Amanda’s friends at Seattle Prep, partnered with Tom in establishing Friends of Amanda (FOA). They recruited attorney and media commentator Anne Bremner as an advocate for the cause and were joined by Jim Lovering, a retired businessman who became the organization’s archivist and Internet wizard. Together they created two websites: “Friendsofamanda.org” would post up-to-date information regarding the case for her supporters and the media. “Amanda-defensefund. org” would be run by the family and accept contributions for her defense. FOA mobilized a wide array of resources and received hundreds of thousands of hits from around the world. Among other tasks, they eventually collected hundreds of thousands of documents and pieces of evidence.

  As was true with West Memphis and the effort spearheaded by Lorri Davis, Wright, Heavey and Lovering’s work demonstrates the Herculean undertaking that any legal defense represents. And this one was complicated by a trial and imprisonment that took place 6,000 miles and nine time zones away.

  Despite his media background, Tom made the decision early on that he would not approach the case as a writer or a filmmaker because he didn’t want any of his decisions to be clouded by story considerations or the prospect of personal gain. He only wanted to be a friend and felt he needed complete objectivity to be effective. He was the one who brought my old colleague Steve Moore into the case after Steve sent an email to Friends of Amanda volunteering his services. Tom took it upon himself to vet all volunteers carefully to make sure they had competence and no ulterior motives or hidden agenda. After lunching with Steve near Pepperdine in Malibu, Tom showed him crime scene footage the police had taken. Steve was aghast at the apparent incompetence and cavalier attitude.

  Their influence reached not only far, but high as well. On her way to the airport to attend the 2008 Democratic Convention, Washington Senator Maria Cantwell stopped off at the Heavey home in West Seattle and met with Edda for more than an hour, pledging to do everything she could. Her support was both public and behind-the-scenes and didn’t let up until Amanda was freed.

  Senator Cantwell had searing personal experience that allowed her to empathize with the Mellas and Knox families. In 1977, when she was nineteen, her twenty-one-year-old brother Daniel was charged with the murder of a twenty-six-year-old woman who had rented an apartment from his and Maria’s mother. The case went on for three years with three prosecutors, two sets of defense attorneys, two changes of venue and two trials before a jury took only twenty minutes to acquit Daniel. Maria Cantwell knew the devastation a false charge brings to a family.

  Ultimately, along with Cantwell, who remained a vociferous public advocate, personages as diverse as developer Donald Trump and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would call for justice for Amanda.

  Everything about the case against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito was based on supposition, preconceived ideas and questionable testimony. Near the end of March 2008, as both defendants cooled their heels in Italian prisons awaiting an appeal by the Corte Suprema di Cassazione (Supreme Court of Cassation) in Rome regarding their imprisonment before trial, Rudy Guede asked to speak to Giuliano Mignini. It seemed he had just remembered that the intruder he’d run into the night of the murder was, in fact, Raffaele. He also remembered hearing Amanda’s voice.

  Rudy gained himself no credibility with his shifting story, but it wasn’t enough to get the other two out. The Italian Supreme Court upheld Mignini’s satanic ritual/sex orgy theory and even cited the Nike shoeprint as evidence, even though Rudy later admitted the print was probably his. Raffaele also had a pair of Nikes.

  Amanda spent her twenty-first birthday, July 9, 2008, in Capanne Prison. Her mother was allowed to visit, but not to bring a cake.

  CHAPTER 31

  TRIAL

  By the time the pretrial motions began on September 19 at the Palace of Justice in Perugia, under Judge Paolo Micheli, the three defendants were among the most famous people in Italy. Amanda’s fame and infamy had long since spread to England, and she was being covered seriously by the American media as well.

  The key to the fascination, I think, was similar to what I had seen in the Ramsey case and was wrapped up in the presumption that she was guilty. First of all, why would Italian authorities arrest her and put her in jail awaiting charges and trial if she were just an innocent little American schoolgirl? Some of the papers had taken to calling her “Angel Face” and both “Luciferina” and “Bambi.” What made her fascinating was the existential human mystery of why someone that lovely would kill another girl who was supposed to be her friend, and how she had deployed her sexual wiles to get two men to go along with her.

  To counter this image, the Knox-Mellas family hired a crisis management consultant at a public relations firm, further impoverishing themselves. And, of course, they were roundly criticized for it by various members of the media for trying to manage the news, which has the same fatuous logic as saying if someone needs a lawyer to defend him, he must actually be guilty.

  Still, the prosecution team continued to promote the story that far from being friends, the two girls didn’t get along because Amanda was a deadbeat on the rent and didn’t do her share of the housework, even though neither assertion was ever verified, and neither is exactly a common motive for murder.

  This supposed animosity between Meredith and Amanda could have been disputed effectively were it not for another of the mistakes by officials in the case. While examining the computers belonging to both young women, police managed to destroy both hard drives, which obliterated some key material on Amanda’s laptop. Specifically, there were dozens of digital photos of Meredith and Amanda hanging out and having fun together and numerous emails between the two that would have testified to their blossoming friendship. Whether this was an act of deliberation or ineptitude, we cannot say, but either way, it removed a troublesome impediment to Mignini’s theory of ongoing tension between the two flatmates.

  At the hearing, Rudy’s lawyers asked that his case be separated from the other two and that he be given an abbreviated, fast-track trial, which was his right in Italy. They said he didn’t want to be tarnished by the evidence against Amanda and Raffaele. Defendants who go this route often receive reduced sentences for saving authorities the trouble of a drawn-out legal affair.

  When Amanda finally got a chance to speak, she described the terror of the police station and tried to explain why she had named Patrick. “Meredith was my friend, and I had no reason to kill her,” she stated. “I am innocent. I wasn’t in the house that night. If I said the opposite before, it was because I was forced to do so because the police pressured me.”

  Since Italian courts only sit about two days a week and take breaks for all sorts of things, the pretrial procedures lasted nearly two months. On October 27, Judge Micheli announced that Rudy Guede had been found guilty of murder in his fast-track trial and was being sentenced to thirty years in prison and payment of several million euro to Meredith’s family. Amanda and Raffaele would be tried for murder, sexual assault and theft, among other charges.

  The trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito began on January 16, 2009, at the Perugia Corte d’Assise. Judge Giancarlo Massei presided, assisted by Deputy Judge Beatrice Cristiani and six lay judges, all of whom would decide the defendants’ fate. That is the trial system in Italy.

  Coverage of the case had gone global and there were media representatives from all over the world. Fashion commentators critiqued Amanda’s daily outfit and appearance. The apparent rise or fall of her weight was of keen interest.

  Joining Giuliano Mignini in the prosecution was Manuela Comodi. They called the already-convicted Rudy Guede once during the trial, but he exercised his right to remain silent and so was sent back to prison.

  Ironically—or maybe not—G
iuliano Mignini had to go back to Florence from time to time for his own trial on charges of intimidating witnesses and illegally tapping phones of journalists and police officers in the notorious “Monster of Florence” case. That series of crimes, in which sixteen young lovers were killed with the same gun in the foothills outside of Florence between the late 1960s and mid 1980s, became a national psychodrama in Italy. Though a number of suspects have been identified, charged and convicted over the years, many feel the case remains largely unsolved. Mignini reopened the case in 2002, claiming, according to ABC News, that “the murders were the work of a satanic sect, dating back to the Middle Ages, that needed female body parts for their Black Masses, to serve as the blasphemous wafer.”

  This would all be comical if it wasn’t so deadly serious.

  I wondered whether Mignini’s relentless prosecution of Amanda and Raffaele was essentially a face-saving scenario to detract attention from the charges against him having to do with the Monster of Florence. If he could bring in convictions in another case to which the whole world was riveted, perhaps the disgrace in the former case wouldn’t stick.

  As witness after witness appeared over the course of weeks, the questionable facts, character innuendos and specious theories were paraded before the judges. Again, the issue of the timing of the first call to the Carabinieri arose; but the Postal Police could not pinpoint the time of their arrival, so it was their word against the defendants’ on when the call was made.

  Several witnesses claimed to have seen Amanda Knox and/or Raffaele Sollecito outside the house at critical times, but these witnesses came across as confused and mistaken. One woman who the prosecution hoped would pinpoint the time of death by her report of an earsplitting scream turned out to be hard of hearing and mentally ill to the point of needing hospitalization. Another eyewitness, a homeless man who had conveniently testified for the prosecution in two other serious crimes, turned out to be a heroin addict and couldn’t even get the date straight.

  Paola Grande, Filomena’s friend who had come to the house with her on the day Meredith’s body was discovered, testified that, indeed, Amanda was upset and did cry. The next day, Filomena Romanelli herself got on the stand, confirmed Amanda’s tears and stated that the American and British girls were friends and had gotten along fine. And Amanda was not a deadbeat; she always paid her rent on time.

  The prosecution was able to squeeze out a few complaints that they claimed the three flatmates shared about the American girl. The bill of particulars included: not doing enough of the housework, not always cleaning the toilet, playing the same song frequently and monotonously on Laura’s guitar, doing yoga exercises at odd times and in inappropriate situations, and generally being “too outgoing.”

  These may be the kinds of annoyances an attentive mother might scold you for, but they are not the sort of issues that lead to murder in otherwise rational people.

  Giuliano Mignini put several of Meredith Kercher’s English girlfriends in Perugia on the stand, hoping they would reveal a huge rift between the two flatmates. But most of their testimony was bland, and the worst they could come up with were a few petty complaints they thought Meredith might have had. The ones who were with Meredith on Halloween actually helped Amanda’s case by saying they had seen no sign of Rudy that night, and he did not flirt with Meredith and make a plan to see her the next evening.

  Whatever negative things the British girls had to say about Amanda were in marked contrast to what they had—or, more accurately, hadn’t—said about her prearrest—namely, that Meredith had grown to dislike her.

  The prosecution rested in June, having heaped theory upon theory; but if one studies the transcript and reports, they had proven absolutely nothing. Not a single witness or piece of forensic evidence could put Amanda Knox anywhere near the scene of the crime.

  On June 12, Amanda took the stand in her own defense, straining to make herself understood in her imperfect Italian. All of the opposing lawyers got a chance to get their licks in on her, but her story remained consistent. At one point, she explained that during the long night of questioning, interrogators told her they already had the other suspect in custody and all she had to do was mention his name. When she couldn’t, they hit her and called her stupid. Then they told her that giving them an account of what had happened was the only way she could avoid spending thirty years in prison.

  When a friend from Seattle came to testify as a character witness for Amanda, he was questioned about her sex life in Seattle, about which he knew nothing. Then, to show how wild and uncontrollable she was, the prosecutors produced the record of a citation she’d been given when a party at a house she and some roommates had rented near the University of Washington campus had gotten out of hand and a neighbor had called the police complaining about the noise and some participants allegedly throwing rocks at cars. It was actually a moving-out party the housemates had collectively hosted.

  We have examined the actual citation—Amanda’s only prior brush with the law. In form it looks like a typical parking ticket, and in the incident description, the officer states that he did not see any damage and that Amanda came outside and presented herself as one of the residents, which is why she was the one listed on the citation. She apologized for the noise and said she knew nothing about any rock throwing. To me, this shows her sense of responsibility. She easily could have ducked the officer and let someone else take the rap. The punishment consisted of a $269 fine that all of the housemates shared and a warning that rock throwing was “dangerous and juvenile,” which Amanda accepted on behalf of the actual offenders.

  These petty grievances are part of a clear and subversive pattern. Mignini and his team had nothing substantive against Amanda, so they threw in anything they could think of to convince the judges and the public what a bad girl she was, and therefore how evil and capable of violent murder.

  Mark and I have spoken with many people around Amanda. It became clear to us that the Amanda Knox the prosecution and the media described did not exist in real life. She was a creation designed to serve their very specific needs and purposes.

  Teachers and fellow students at Seattle Prep described Amanda with terms such as “bright,” “sweet” and “kind.” One teacher noted that in history class debates, she would always take the side of the smallest country.

  In both academics and athletics, one teacher said, “she was a brilliant example of determination. She kept working at something until she could do it well.” In a Seattle Prep production of Annie Tom Wright’s daughter Sara had the lead role and Amanda was one of the orphans. It was directed by John Lange, one of Amanda’s favorite teachers and a close friend to this day. As Tom recalled, she decided she was going to do multiple backflips as part of the dance routine, but in every rehearsal kept landing on her bottom. By the first scheduled performance she still hadn’t completed the routine successfully but was determined to keep trying.

  “On opening night, for the first time she nailed it,” Tom reported, “and all of the other orphans just stopped and broke into spontaneous cheering.”

  Despite the defense’s success in portraying Rudy as a habitual crook with several breaking-and-entering and theft charges, as well as his previous use of a knife in some of his crimes, Mignini forged on with his narrative that was supported by nothing other than his own supposition. He created an elaborate fifteen-minute video presentation, reported to have cost more than $200,000, taking the jurors visually through the crime, with identifiable animated avatars representating Rudy, Raffaele and Amanda. Intercut with this “recreation” were graphic crime scene photographs. There was nothing to back up anything the video purported, but this piece of imaginary fiction helped seal the relationship between the defendants and the horrific murder in the jurors’ minds.

  On October 9, after a long summer recess, Judge Massei announced there was no need to appoint independent experts, as was common for disputed evidence or testimony in Italian trials, declaring, “We have all th
e evidence we need.”

  Before that, John Kercher suffered a stroke that sent him to the hospital for several days, with severe dizziness and double vision for weeks afterward. He did not know whether stress from the murder and the trial was the cause, but I have seen many families so afflicted in the aftermath of a murder. Facing up to such a horror requires everything you have to give, and more. While I don’t believe that stress causes illness, it certainly capitalizes on the body’s weaknesses. My heart goes out to the entire Kercher family and always will.

  As had occurred years after the conviction in the West Memphis case, a group of American scientists met in Las Vegas while the trial was ongoing and declared that the DNA evidence from the knife and bra clasp were useless and should have no bearing on the case.

  They put their finding succinctly in writing and made them public: The DNA testing results described above could have been obtained even if no crime had occurred. As such, they do not constitute credible evidence that linked Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito to the murder of Meredith Kercher.

  The trial lasted eleven months and heard 140 witnesses. On November 20, 2009, Giuliano Mignini rose to give his closing argument. It went on for eight hours during which he repeated his story about the orgy, even though neither Luca Lalli nor any other expert could show evidence of a sexual attack. Even Rudy Guede’s DNA found in Meredith turned out to be particles of skin cells rather than semen.

  Mignini’s entire argument was an exercise in speculation, and not even informed speculation. He merely told a story of Amanda meeting Rudy by chance, making a plan to go back to her house and going to get Raffaele. They confronted Meredith; the two women had it out; then they attacked her with knives.