In other words, I believe there was no justice in Italy on Friday night. The system completely failed Meredith Kercher.
A tremendous amount of evidence existed against Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede that indicated all three of them were involved in the murder of Meredith Kercher. This is completely contrary to the mantra chanted by Knox's devoted fan club. Of course, Knox had a stellar PR team here in the United States -- a PR team that strategically controlled the tone of the media coverage about her here in the United States.
Like George Zimmerman, Casey Anthony and OJ Simpson, Knox has found herself luckier than the average killer. Like all three of the aforementioned acquitted persons, there was just enough evidence to create a rift between the public -- between people who believed she was guilty, and people who wanted to believe in her innocence so much that they allowed themselves to be completely manipulated by the PR-powered media coverage and the obscene amount of misinformation that still exists about this case.
Today, Amanda is a free woman. She lives in Seattle almost flaunting the fact that she was released after so much evidence seemed to prove that she was -- at the least -- involved in staging a break-in and obstructing justice in the case of Meredith Kercher's murder. At the least, her behavior indicated that she had inside knowledge of Meredith's slaying, and at the most the evidence indicated that she was directly involved. Nonetheless, the highest court in Italy has decided to simply let her go.
But why?
My thoughts on this are varied. Right now none of us are fully aware of the reasoning behind the judges' decision to overturn Knox's conviction. They have a couple of months before they have to publish their official reasoning, but they could publish it at any time. In the meantime, there is plenty of gossip and speculation surrounding why Italy decided to let Amanda Knox go after so many years of insisting that she was involved in a horribly gruesome murder. One popular theory is that they simply decided that it would be nearly impossible to get her extradited from the U.S. back to Italy where she would have served close to 30 years. This isn't so much declaring Knox's innocence so much as declaring their desire to simply move on from this polarizing case.
Regardless of the official reasons for the acquittal there is one thing that has been made clear: There will be no justice for Meredith Kercher. Just like there will be no justice for Caylee Marie Anthony, Trayvon Martin or even Nicole Brown Simpson. Sometimes, people get away with murder, and there's nothing that can prevent that.
Do you want to talk about Amanda Knox's case? Don't miss Sunday's podcast!
