Great post. I would encourage anyone who wants to know more about the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic in the 80’s to read “Satan’s Silence:Ritual Abuse And The Making Of A Modern American Witch Hunt” by Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker and “Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, And Sexual Hysteria” by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters. They are both excellent resources on the topic.

Okay, so she was this American student in Italy who was convicted of some gruesome sexual murder involving her roommate and some other people, and after a few years, she’s been exonerated, or, at least, found not guilty.  Good for her.

I hate to say that that’s about as much as I know about the case, and even some of that I just learned today.  I’ve steered clear of the story, as I did of the Anthony case, because I figured no one would give a shit and no one would have written or read three words about it if the victim or perpetrator were some equivalently-aged black or hispanic girl/woman living five blocks from here.

I remain unconvinced that the best way to achieve justice is to screw everyone equally, instead of raise the bar for everyone. Fucking over Knox isn’t going to get a single innocent person of color out of jail. On the contrary, any opportunity to highlight how people are railroaded is one that will help us make the case when the person being railroaded is a person of color.

In fact, part of me thinks the “screw Amanda Knox” attitudes is the laziest kind of “activism” ever. It’s like, “Well, I’m not going to raise a finger to help less privileged people who are railroaded, but at least I’m consistent in my disregard.” Ugh.

How do you convict someone for a crime when someone else has already been convicted of it, and the two theories are incompatible?

Remind me never to travel to Italy.  Yuck.

I have to honestly say that I have no real opinion on her guilt or innocence. However, what is clear is that the trial evidence was a disaster and that the acquittal was the only just way for it to end, and in the end the Italian justice system fixed its error.

Also, I’m not quite sure what to make of the fact that it’s a criminal offense to throw someone under the bus the way she did the bar owner, but it is what it is.

Excellent post, Amanda.

Knox threw herself under the bus in the same breath. If someone breaks under questioning to the point where they’re willing to falsely implicate themselves, I’m going to go easier on them for falsely accusing someone else.

According to the account in Rolling Stone, the authorities were relentlessly pushing for the name of a black man.

The psychology of false confessions is fascinating. Intuitively it seems absurd that anyone would confess to a crime they didn’t commit just because of psychological pressure or physical pressure short of torture. But it happens all the time. David Simon has a great discussion of the psychology that homicide detectives use to break suspects under interrogation in “Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets.” Frontline did a great documentary about false confessions. IIRC, Navy investigators got five guys to falsely confess to the same murder.

Remind me never to travel to Italy.  Yuck.

I’m not convinced America’s justice system is significantly better.

If you actually read about the case, the “no opinion” stance will make you ill that you ever held it. It’s upsetting to me that there’s pressure to be agnostic on this, which I believe leads back to underlying “want to believe” currents in our society, and in Italy’s society. We want to believe in Satanic worship, in the femme fatale. We’re tired of the same boring story of some immoral dude raping and killing a woman because he could. We want to hold out for the possibility that, dare I say, something sexier happened.

I think that urge is an important story.  There’s literally no reason to pit Knox against many other innocent people that have been railroaded into jail. Her case can be used to highlight those while also raising important questions of why we, as a society, have such a hard-on to see pretty women suffer.  I don’t think the “white women missing” stories are entirely chivalrous. I think there’s an edge of misogyny and pornographic desire to hurt and punish in them, as well.

Couldn’t agree more, and it was despicable how much the prosecutors explicitly used Knox’s sexuality in support of their portrayal of her as a ‘witch’. I don’t like to drag up nationality in these cases but the fact that this has come so close to the trial where six scientists are being charged with manslaughter for failing to accurately predict an earthquake speaks volumes about the state of Italian justice right now.

@9

The phrase “torture porn” to describe graphically violent horror movies has always suggested to me that our society is at least unconsciously aware of the connection between its obsession with violence and its juvenile fascination with female sexuality. The whole “sluts die, virgin becomes the Final Girl” aspect of teen slasher movies has been well-known for decades, but in 21st century torture porn they really, really, really seem to enjoy punishing the shit out of beautiful, sexually active women.

Even the guy who did plead no contest had pretty-poor evidence against him, after the farce that was their treatment of the other witnesses and forensics.  I also don’t understand how his possession of stolen property was ignored in the theft declaration - and he got half the time for twice the crimes of the other two.

That’s just horrible.

Triplanetary:  Me neither; but several of the things that were wrong here couldn’t happen in a US court - the previous conviction and theory of the murder would be evidence; a previous conviction would give them a reason for getting the judge to just throw the case out entirely, not jus on appeal but before anyone stepped into a courtroom.

I’m happy for Amanda Knox today. I also find it *hilarious* that, at the same time an out-of-control prosecutor was able to convince the court she was a she-devil because she didn’t dress right and had condoms in her bedroom, the Italian president was cavorting openly with underaged strippers. It’s enough to make me never want to go to Italy. 

We want to believe in Satanic worship, in the femme fatale. We’re tired of the same boring story of some immoral dude raping and killing a woman because he could. We want to hold out for the possibility that, dare I say, something sexier happened.

I guest-posted on this at Feministe a few years back, and that’s pretty close to the conclusion that I came to as well.

I did closely follow Amanda’s case as I’ve spent quite a few years living in Seattle and it was all over the news for awhile. I find it surprising that you feel her case can be used to highlight misogyny and a hard-on by society as a whole to see pretty women suffer.

I’m 100% sure if I, a plump not-handsome middle aged white man, was roommates with a murder victim and I didn’t have an alibi for the night of the murder, and I lied to police about seeing someone else commit the murder, there wouldn’t be a blog post about me being unfairly targeted by society. Instead I would be fighting in court to prove my innocence and no one would think it odd that charges had been brought against me.

Amanda confessed she was present the night of the murder and said she heard Miss Kercher scream. She confessed this during the initial interrogation and then again the next day in a written statement. She told the police she saw Lumumba commit the murder. Luckily for Lumumba someone came forth to alibi his whereabouts on the night of the murder.

Amanda’s alibi for the night of the murder then became that she stayed all night with her new boyfriend watching moves and making love. But her boyfriend told police the day after the murders that he could not remember if she stayed over or not that night.

The strangest thing of all is that both Amanda and her boyfriend turned their cell phones off at the same time at 8:40 pm and then they both turned them on at the same time at 6 am. They later told police it was because they were watching moves on his computer. The police were able to prove that his computer showed no activity during the times in question. Which is of course circumstantial but still enough to have police at least follow through with building a case.

Granted there was some shady things going on after the investigation had been going on for awhile. And I would agree with you 100% if you directed your accusations against the prosecutor specifically and not society as a whole. But any police force in the world would have been considered negligent if they didn’t attempt to build a case against someone who didn’t have an alibi for the night of the murder of their roommate. Who lied and tried to muddy the waters of their investigation in the manner in which Amanda did.

I feel that this is an example of justice working. A case was brought against someone based on the actions of that person and then a jury found that person not guilty after hearing about tainted evidence.

Anyways just my 2 cents.

@15, it’s fine for you to say that, but in the US you wouldn’t have been questioned for 50+ hours, without a lawyer, in your first five days in jail, by investigators who were said to be pushing hard for the name of a black man. If that had happened to you, or me or anybody, we might easily implicate Barack Obama if we thought it would end the nightmare.

Yeah, why can’t middle-aged white men ever catch a break in Europe and the US? Gawd.

When you’re on a hot date, it’s customary to turn your phone off, even if you plan to stay in and fuck, rather than murder an acquaintance during an orgy with a stranger.

It’s also customary for panicked teenagers to tell adults that they were “watching movies” when they were, in fact, fucking.

A confession given under duress should be given no weight whatsoever. That is the whole point of Miranda Rights and the 5th amendment- although it appears that Italy does not have the equivalent- can someone who knows Italian law advise?

I’d not heard of this case until today, but I don’t need to be ‘agnostic’ on the issue. You’re innocent until proven guilty, and there was no proof.

The “she’s only getting attention cause she’s pretty” complaint is weak.  Her looks were probably a factor in her 4 year ordeal- can anyone imagine the prosecutor making this same “sex games/satanic ritual” case about an average looking girl?  Would the British press be referring to her as “Foxy Knoxy”?  Doubt it.  I don’t want to oversell this point, but sometimes being a pretty girl is a liability.

@15: We’ve been over this at <a >Less Wrong</a> a long time ago, but long story short unless Amanda Knox is a very skilled ninja there is no way she could have been in that room while the murder was occurring.

Being unskilled at criminal trials is common to many people and not any kind of evidence for one’s guilt. Amanda Knox clearly should not be a politician but there’s no real evidence that she killed anyone. Any untrained person you pull off the street might say suspicious things, including possibly changing their alibi, but the police would still be terribly negligent if they went after random bystanders. And Knox was essentially a bystander; the police had no reason to ever pursue her in the first place. (Go read the Less Wrong post for more about this.)

OH and also confessions are worthless. Police everywhere put TONS of pressure on everyone that comes into the interrogation room. I’ve heard enough about confessions to regard them as evidence for the defendant’s INNOCENCE; a guilty defendant with any experience with police would never agree to an interrogation in the first place.

@16: Oh yes you would, if you agreed to be interrogated. The Italian police were pretty bad when they gathered the forensic evidence, and when they decided who to pursue, but the interrogation bits are common across nearly all police. The main advantage in the US is that you don’t HAVE to agree to the interrogation, and you CAN demand a lawyer, but many people are unskilled with police and don’t. Which is always a mistake.

——
And having been one of the people over at Feministe that said the stuff about Missing White Woman Syndrome, I want to add here that I do agree with Amanda that it’s not okay to not care about anyone wrongly convicted of a crime. The reason I said that was that I was seriously obsessed with the case for a while after Less Wrong convinced me of Knox’s innocence and it wasn’t terribly comfortable, to put it mildly.

If I recall correctly, the epithet “foxy” describes Knox’s clever handling of the ol’ football, not a synonym for “sexy.”

#23 when she was on a high school soccer team.  The media didn’t use it that way though.

BlackHumor:

All fair enough, but LessWrong doesn’t strike me as the best possible source for rational thinking. They have huge blind spots when it comes to transhumanist matters. I know the Randi.org forums have been discussing the case at length, though.

If the Amanda Knox fiasco justifies not going to Italy (per comments #5 and #13), would the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham justify not visiting the US?

#26 okay, I’ll bite: yep!

I don’t know whether to cheer or not.  Amanda Knox’s release seemed to be a continuation of an interesting trend in which certain members of the American citizenry can be released or exonerated for murder, yet other members such as Troy Davis cannot.  I realize that some might label this as an example of the “screw Amanda Knox” mentality.  Okay . . . perhaps it is.  Or perhaps it’s not.  But I won’t be cheering, because I don’t know how I feel about all of this, especially on the heels of people like Casey Anthony and Mr. Davis.

“What was interesting about the Satanic ritual abuse situation is that so many feminists got caught up in the hysteria.  Historically speaking, this makes some sense. Child abuse was a feminist issue, and it basically got hijacked by more right wing impulses to attack the places that made it possible for so many mothers to work…Now when right wingers steal feminist language and claim…we see the ruse for what it is. Not as much in the 80s.”

Who were these unnamed right-wingers who stole feminist language during the Satanic ritual abuse hysteria? I recall the right-wing Wall Street Journal, Dorothy Rabinowitz in particular, as a leading voice in opposition.

In contrast, Ms. Magazine was in part of tyranny. Gloria Steinam, Katha Pollick, and Catharine MacKinnon were all caught up in the inquisition. Some feminists opposed, Wendy Kaminer for instance, but she is more like Camille Paglia, loved by the Right (though not as much).

I mean the political right…Movement Conservatism. I suppose the right-wing in question here could be just populism, ie the Religious being spooked and Communities seeking revenge. But then who was leading who? Folks on the Left who bear responsibility were the elites, like Janet Reno and Martha Coakley. Are there any Right Wing equivalents to them who also stepped in it? Alberto Gonzales? Rush Limbaugh?

As for the 2nd teir, How many psychiatrists, social workers, and child welfare advocates are righties?  We are either too dumb to meet the grad school requirements for those professions or too busy trading mortgage backed securities to care. You guys know that.

Man, a bunch of leftwingers whip up populist hysteria and then, presumably because the whipped are more conservative than the whippers, the fault goes to the American Rightwing. Where have I heard this story before?

Satanic panic as a left wing hysteria? Are you even capable of dressing yourself? Does your mommy know you’re using her computer?

‘Where have I heard this story before?”

You haven’t heard it anywhere, b/c it hasn’t happened anywhere, you nitwit.  I’m going to tell you something you already know, just so that it will have been entered into the record: neither Wendy Kaminer nor Andrea Dworkin nor Camille Paglia has ever been “loved by the Right”.  The righties who have shown a willingness to co-opt these people have also shown a fundamental, and deliberate, unwillingness to understand or acknowledge what they were/are all about.  Andrea Dworkin* may have seen fit at times to make common cause with the Fundies, and some of them may have been willing to persuade themselves that they liked her, but that never meant that she was on their side, far less that they were on hers.

“Folks on the Left who bear responsibility were the elites, like Janet Reno and Martha Coakley.”

What are you talking about?  Janet Reno’s claim to fame is that she got entangled with the Branch Davidian business in Waco, and Martha Coakley’s is that she may have overreacted to a bomb scare.  Neither of these incidents has eff-all to do with the Amanda Knox case, though both of them can be made to play into the “bitchez aren’t bright” narrative, which is why (I suspect) you’ve decided to bring them up.

Besides, what is this “elites” nonsense?  Feminism, as such, still more or less subsists at the level of bake sales and mimeograph machines (not that there’s anything wrong with that).  Lots of grassroots activity takes place at the level of bake sales and mimeograph machines, but it’s not the province of the elites.  Everybody knows who the elites are in this country: everybody knows what they look like and how they operate.  Bake sales and bulletin boards aren’t in it.  Let me give you a hint: elites don’t putter around handing out flyers and trying to wheedle money out of their neighbors.  Elites invite you to spend a weekend at their hunting lodge so they can let you know about the facts of life.  It’s not too hard to tell the difference.

“Man, a bunch of leftwingers whip up populist hysteria and then, presumably because the whipped are more conservative than the whippers, the fault goes to the American Rightwing.”

If you’re really this stupid, though I’m betting you’re not, you deserve to be spanked.

*I am not now nor have I ever been a fan of hers, BTW.

What are you talking about?  Janet Reno’s claim to fame is that she got entangled with the Branch Davidian business in Waco, and Martha Coakley’s is that she may have overreacted to a bomb scare.

Besides, what is this “elites” nonsense?

Elite would be someone with the power of a State Attorney. Somone whose lefty cult-of-victimization ideology leads them to persecute the innocent:

Janet Reno’s reputation as a state attorney, the foundation for her eight years as the nation’s attorney general and her present candidacy for governor of Florida, was built in significant part by her aggressive prosecution of three sensational child abuse cases in Miami-Dade County. She pioneered a controversial technique for eliciting intimate details from young children and inspired passage of a law allowing them to testify by closed-circuit television, out of the possibly intimidating presence of their suspected molesters. It is open to dispute, however, whether this is a record of which she should be proud.

One of the defendants, a 14-year-old boy, was acquitted after his attorneys discredited the children’s persistent interrogations by a psychologist who called herself the “yucky secrets doctor.” Another was freed by a federal appeals court after 12 years in prison. Only the first, Francisco Fuster Escalona, remains behind bars, serving 165 years on 14 counts of abusing children at the Country Walk day care center in southwest Dade. His 18-year-old wife, Ileana Flores, had pleaded guilty and testified against him.

http://www.sptimes.com/2002/04/28/Perspective/Reno_owes_the_public_.shtml

Elite would be someone who uses her power of District Attorney to commit evil:

The story of the Amiraults of Massachusetts, and of the prosecution that had turned the lives of this thriving American family to dust, was well known to the world by the year 2001. It was well known, especially, to District Attorney Martha Coakley, who had by then arrived to take a final, conspicuous, role in a case so notorious as to assure that the Amiraults’ name would be known around the globe.
In 2000, the Massachusetts Governor’s Board of Pardons and Paroles met to consider a commutation of Gerald’s sentence. After nine months of investigation, the board, reputed to be the toughest in the country, voted 5-0, with one abstention, to commute his sentence. Still more newsworthy was an added statement, signed by a majority of the board, which pointed to the lack of evidence against the Amiraults, and the “extraordinary if not bizarre allegations” on which they had been convicted.

Editorials in every major and minor paper in the state applauded the Board’s findings.

District Attorney Coakley…and quickly set about organizing the parents and children in the case, bringing them to meetings with Acting Gov. Jane Swift, to persuade her to reject the board’s ruling. Ms. Coakley also worked the press, setting up a special interview so that the now adult accusers could tell reporters, once more, of the tortures they had suffered at the hands of the Amiraults, and of their panic at the prospect of Gerald going free.

On Feb. 20, 2002, six months after the Board of Pardons issued its findings, the governor denied Gerald’s commutation.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704281204575003341640657862.html

Perhaps we should also add Gov Jane Swift to the list of left-leaning elites who bear responsibility for this sorry chapter in American History. Maybe if MA goes R in 30 years or so you can argue she was a right-wing conservative the whole time.

Remind me never to travel to Italy.  Yuck.

I’m not convinced America’s justice system is significantly better.

America’s justice system is incredibly flawed, especially when dealing with those who aren’t from privileged classes, but there are a couple of ways in which it is unambiguously better than Italy. Double jeopardy is the biggest reason - apparently Knox’ exoneration today does not prevent the prosecutor from trying to go after her again if he can introduce new evidence. The second biggest reason is that they can actually INCREASE someone’s sentence when the convicted individual makes an appeal. Knox was originally sentenced to 26 years originally. Though it was certainly unlikely to occur, there was a possibility that when today’s ruling was passed down, not only could they have upheld the initial conviction, they could have actually sentenced her to life in prison if they wanted to.

The idea that appealing a conviction or a sentence can actually lead to being given an even more severe sentence is utterly appalling. The fact that she could have left that courtroom today facing an even tougher sentence than the one she was already serving has to have an extremely chilling effect on attempts by convicted persons in Italy to appeal their convictions.

@26 as a foreign traveler to the US I’d more likely be scared off by our execution of foreign nationals after not giving them access to their consular officials. That, our government’s high-handed treatment of travelers generally, and the appalling private jails we use for people in immigration limbo.

As a US citizen I do avoid traveling to Georgia and Texas, all apologies to Amanda. If only I didn’t have family in one of those states I could stay away forever.

Alaska, your knowledge of the case is actually quite low. You’re suffering from that syndrome where people who know very little think they know a lot. For instance, you seem not to know the confession was extracted under what amounts to torture, a common method of getting false confessions.

But thanks for demonstrating what I mean about how people’s desire to believe—-their misogynistic impulse to assume the worst about women, especially attractive women—-is overwhelming common sense.

For those who have bamboozled into “agnosticism” by the certainty displayed by those who want to believe like Alaska, I highly recommend this piece in the Rolling Stone about the case. You’ll be *shocked* at what a railroading it was.

But I repeat my statement about “Satanic worship”. It’s an urban myth. Whenever someone brings it up, assume that they’re speaking a fantasy and not a reality.  This assumption has never once failed me.

CTrent, do you feel that keeping Amanda Knox in jail would somehow improve other people’s situations? I’m trying to nail down the reason that throwing her under the bus would somehow improve the overall situation where people who suffer from different prejudices—-let’s not forget she was railroaded for being attractive and sexually active while female—-have less of a chance to escape. Please explain, because I honestly do think the more attention that any case where a person is jailed not because of evidence but identity gives us a chance to highlight the overall problem prejudice plays in the justice system.

Gosh, Manju, I admitted that feminists got caught up in the hysteria. (Some; some were critical of it.)  Isn’t that enough? You see an admission of imperfection and your response is, “Well, just kill yourself, then.”  Sorry, no. That some feminists were really wrong and that their wrongness was corrected is important.  But of the two groups who got sucked up into the frenzy—-fundamentalist Christians and radical feminists—-only one has continued to believe in Satanic worship involving violent orgies.

I hadn’t read much about the facts of the case until yesterday; now that I have I’m glad they were released.

If the Amanda Knox fiasco justifies not going to Italy (per comments #5 and #13), would the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham justify not visiting the US?

As far as avoiding Italy, I’m more concerned about them having a manslaughter trial for scientists who didn’t predict an earthquake. Every country has convicted the wrong person of murder, but putting scientists on trial for not being psychics is appalling and should be laughed out of court immediately. That they don’t have some sort of rule preventing that trial makes me wonder about their legal system in general.

We’ve got some bad prosecutors in the U.S.  Incompetent fools, corrupt egotists, attention-seeking jerks.  We even have, as this post points out, prosecutors who are willing to play on hysteria about “satanism” to get a conviction.  But we don’t have anyone as bad as the prosecutor who put Amanda Knox in jail.  He’s on another level.

But we don’t have anyone as bad as the prosecutor who put Amanda Knox in jail.  He’s on another level.

We had that judge who put teenagers in jail for kickbacks. We have a lot more people than Italy overall, so I’d be willing to bet we have more horrible people than Italy does, too.

The Knox prosecutor is just astoundingly crazy and corrupt. I’m amazed Italian law lets him continue to serve as a prosecutor—he seems like someone who should be sitting in a jail cell instead of the innocent people he fixates on.

Having said that, I have no doubt that there’ve got to be some judges in the US who have been as bad as he is, but who just haven’t gotten the publicity that the Knox case brought.

I followed the case off and on over the years, and it always felt like the Italian prosecutors wanted someone, anyone, to pay for the murder, and they stopped caring if Amanda was actually involved a long time ago.  Amanda’s biggest crime (in the eyes of the Italians) was coming off as a spoiled American who “didn’t know her place”.  It felt, to me anyway, that this sentiment drove the need to punish her (& her boyfriend by proxy) and to ignore just about any other piece of dissenting evidence.

The other guy who’s serving the 16 year sentence may be “the guy”, but the Italians botched it up so bad that Kercher’s family will have a difficult time getting closure on it.  They’ll never know for sure the right person went to jail for the crime because of an overzealous system.

I’m trying to nail down the reason that throwing her under the bus would somehow improve the overall situation where people who suffer from different prejudices

Some liberals are just downright hostile to middle class people in general. It’s why calling someone “privileged” isn’t used as a statement of fact/observation, but an insult, sometimes.

It basically comes from the same place as the rest of the hysteria that put her in jail: she was studying abroad while in college, not living in an artist commune or being underpaid at a non-profit. She was taking classes, smoking pot, and having sex, not being an “activist.” And then, at the end of it all, she gets let out of jail rather than being left to rot like the “real” oppressed classes.

And look, yes, there are lots of Amanda Knoxes who aren’t getting out of jail, but what’s with the, “no one can be helped until everyone can” attitude?

@geogami, I agree that guy was terrible, but he’s not a judge any more.  He’s in jail.  Whereas nothing is going to happen to this prosecutor.  I’m not interested in arguing that our country is so much better than Italy, but in terms of official corruption, yes, we are better.

@31 Coakley did actually have involvement with the daycare scandal trails when she was a young procecuter.  That said, most of the people Manju mentions were barely blips on the national right horizon at the time.  And Jane Swift, the GOP acting gov of MA from the early 2000s? She’s left-leaning?  Yeah.  Right.  Okay.

Wow, that Rolling Stone article. Hardly ever do you hear a stepfather being so openly a dick about his stepdaughter.

I really don’t like the Oppression Olympics thing going on here. The forces that helped railroad Amanda Knox hurt all women.  They’re the same forces that put rape victims on trial and not their rapists.

I think maybe people who are like “who cares” are unaware that the fact that she masturbates was introduced as evidence that she’s a murderer, as well as the fact that she wears cute underwear or sometimes none at all?  If people realized how much she was basically tried for being a “slut”, they would really see that being blase about this isn’t so cool.

I had totally forgotten about the case until a few days ago, when this site went quiet for a few days…  I was going to search Google News for “Amanda Marcotte” and after typing in “Amanda” Google News offered “Amanda Knox appeal” and a few other links.  I read a few of them,

It was interesting to contrast coverage in the UK with coverage in the US.

The most relevant points, though, that I’ve read are that the Italian appeal process allows for the defendant to challenge the facts of the case—in this country, Amanda Knox would not have been afforded the opportunity to challenge the facts on her appeal.  When one sees the number of people saved by Project Innocence, and then considers what that implies for lesser crimes—I’d rather be tried by the most biased Italian prosecutor…

@James, the downside for defendants, of course, is that prosecutors can appeal verdicts in the Italian system.  And appeals go before a new jury.  I’m not sure how it would all shake out, in terms of fairness to defendants.

Excellent article Amanda M.

Quibble:  I doubt “informed consent” was a feminist idea originally.  It’s a term to describe the process where a doctor recommends a course of action and must inform the patient of the known risks of the procedure.  No doubt the anti-choicers are using the phrase disingenuously.  The phrase and concept has been around since I’ve been an adult, 40+ years now and I’ve never heard in feminist context.  A medical historian could perhaps correct me.

I don’t know whether to cheer or not.  Amanda Knox’s release seemed to be a continuation of an interesting trend in which certain members of the American citizenry can be released or exonerated for murder, yet…

...blah blah blah, poorly rationalized nonsense about not being sure that this is good news, blah blah blah…

Seriously, what is it about this that makes some liberals turn off their brains? It’s not a zero-sum game! We can and should be pissed off about things like the Troy Davis execution while still being grateful and relieved that the travesty of Amanda Knox’s conviction was overturned. And I think Amanda already thoroughly explained the big picture of why this is important and why misogyny played so heavily into this case.

I mean, no one is suggesting that you should literally cheer; I didn’t, but I did say to myself, “Huh, that’s good news, I wasn’t even sure this wasn’t going to end in tragedy.” Because it’s a good thing when innocent people don’t get locked away for crimes they didn’t commit!

I also didn’t get off my seat and cheer when the hikers that Iran arrested and held for “espionage” were released, but was I wrong to feel glad that they were let go because other innocent people don’t get let go? Again, it’s not a zero-sum game.

Seriously, what is it about this that makes some liberals turn off their brains? It’s not a zero-sum game! We can and should be pissed off about things like the Troy Davis execution while still being grateful and relieved that the travesty of Amanda Knox’s conviction was overturned. And I think Amanda already thoroughly explained the big picture of why this is important and why misogyny played so heavily into this case.

This. Sympathy isn’t an inexhaustible resource, is it? We can spare some for privileged people in situations like this while realizing it didn’t make everything all better for those without the media attention and good lawyers. Or at least I can.

In fact, things like this are a good opportunity for liberals to pipe up and say “Yes, Privelegdy Whitegirlson was able to get a fair trial. But imagine if she hadn’t had a good attorney, like the average criminal defendant.” At least some people will make the leap required and be persuaded that the legal system should be reformed.

Amanda’s biggest crime (in the eyes of the Italians) was coming off as a spoiled American who “didn’t know her place”.  It felt, to me anyway, that this sentiment drove the need to punish her (& her boyfriend by proxy) and to ignore just about any other piece of dissenting evidence.

In addition, it could be the result of accumulated anger at special treatment received by Americans and/or their highhandedness with locals in the past because of their superpower ally status…whether real or imagined.

This factor along with the presumption of foreigner guilt is a big factor why whenever Americans are arrested in many East Asian countries….especially ones with heavy US troop presences….they are almost always presumed to be guilty by the local populace. 

The mere title “Ugly American” by Ernest Hemingway is a good shorthand for how many such locals in foreign countries with heavy past/present presence of American troops/tourists perceive Americans….including American college students when they’re arrested or otherwise put on the spot for causing some perceived offense against the local populace.

The second biggest reason is that they can actually INCREASE someone’s sentence when the convicted individual makes an appeal. Knox was originally sentenced to 26 years originally. Though it was certainly unlikely to occur, there was a possibility that when today’s ruling was passed down, not only could they have upheld the initial conviction, they could have actually sentenced her to life in prison if they wanted to.

This is actually a feature of the American legal system, too. In the federal system, at least, the prosecution can appeal a sentence it believes is too lenient. It doesn’t happen often, but the government generally prevails when it does file such an appeal.

Moreover, a defendant who appeals and succeeds in winning reversal of their conviction can be retried, and can be given a more severe sentence on retrial. This may provide a disincentive for certain defendants to appeal at all, particularly those who are convicted of murder, but not sentenced to death (in a jurisdiction where the death penalty is available).

I had read that Knox doesn’t have a pleasant personality. If that wasn’t a straight-up smear job, then that made her easier to scapegoat as “uppity” and “insufficiently subservient.”

And, Amanda, I agree with you that “missing pretty white girl” stories are mainly about titillation. Women who are of color or older or non-photogenic don’t get the same attention because straight male viewers don’t consider them as “fuckable.”

Child abuse was a feminist issue, and it basically got hijacked by more right wing impulses to attack the places that made it possible for so many mothers to work.

Louise Armstrong, whose book Kiss Daddy Goodnight was credited for helping to bring sexual abuse into the public eye, wrote about this phenomenon in a later book entitled Rocking the Cradle of Sexual Abuse: What Happened When Women Said “Incest”. The cultural right in the U.S. created a Cult of the Child without really improving life for American children at all, because it’s as much about “the children” as abortion is; it’s actually about reducing women’s options.

but I have heard a lot of people suggest that perhaps we shouldn’t care that much because Knox is a privileged white woman and that’s why her case is getting so much attention.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how white women seem to get so much more opprobrium than white men do from certain “activists”? I don’t question, for example, that middle-class white feminism has a lot of blinders when it comes to white privilege, but I’ve never seen anti-racism activists strongly repudiate Eldridge Cleaver, either.

Ms. Cherry Pi: Ethan Watters is anti-psychology in general; I would take anything he’s written with a grain of salt.

AlaskaSeth, great example of middle-class white male privilege in action, but everyone else has already told you why.

CTrent29: The Casey Anthony case is yet another example of people’s desire to see a pretty white woman punished overriding their ability to understand facts and evidence. Somehow, I can see why you don’t give a fuck about Amanda Knox’s innocence. Tell me, do you care much about poorer, sometimes darker-skinned women in prison who wound up there because they were submissive to abusive, criminal boyfriends? I rather doubt it.

Manju, aside from what Bekabot said (and I agree with her on your happiness to pin the blame on women—Jane Swift was “left leaning”?!), social workers have always been charged with maintaining the status quo. Plenty of psychiatrists are conservative. And Wendy Kaminer has nothing in common with Camille Paglia, as Kaminer doesn’t pull claims out of her ass.

Did anybody here this morning’s NPR report on Knox?  They made it sound like the only reason her conviction was overturned was her and her family’s use of the media to make the public sympathetic towards her.  I’m sure that’s why she was able to appeal but I’m pretty sure her case was overturned because of the utter lack of evidence.  What the heck, NPR?

exholt, Hemingway didn’t write “The Ugly American,” and while the epithet is an evocative one, in the book, the eponymous character is one of the heroes, while all of the “pretty people” are the ones causing all the messes abroad. (in any case “The Quiet American” is better)

exholt, Hemingway didn’t write “The Ugly American,” and while the epithet is an evocative one, in the book, the eponymous character is one of the heroes, while all of the “pretty people” are the ones causing all the messes abroad. (in any case “The Quiet American” is better)

Oops.  My mistake.  Good points about the book.  However, the epithet is what seizes the imagination of those who felt American troops, tourists, and students have acted too high handedly, given too many special privileges, and need to be taken down a few pegs. 

In fact, the more I read about the Knox case, the more I got the feeling that the Italian press is using Knox as the symbolic punching bag for their latent anti-American feelings against perceived high-handedness and special privileges Americans enjoyed in their society after WWII…whether real or imagined. 

The Italian prosecution’s over-the-top accusations of her being “Jessica Rabbit” and condemning her on her sexuality basis and the lurid Italian press coverage underscores what Amanda wrote in the OP.

I’m sure there was some “we don’t like the snotty rich American girl,” Italy is not a country especially known for anti-Americanism.  I think it was more than the case attracted a lot of attention, and the prosecutor got it into his head that sexyslutmurder would be more professionally beneficial to him than a non-Satanic rape/murder.  Apparently Ms. Knox was less than truthful with the police initially, which makes her a legitimate target for further investigation, but then the police and the prosecutor just refused to back off and instead doubled down on their theory, even as it was getting more and more insane.  Take away the sensationalist details and you have a common problem—someone attracts police attention early in an investigation for completely understandable reasons, but the police get wedded to a theory too early and absolutely refuse to accept evidence that contradicts their original theory.  The result—other suspects and leads are ignored, and all the evidence is shaped to fit the theory.  This case just had an extra dollop of misogyny and craziness on top.

on the plus side, she now speaks fluent Italian, which I think also made the difference as many reports mention how she swayed the jury with her speech in her own defense.

Nobody in Particular: From the Rolling Stones article, it seems that Amanda Knox comes across as being detached from everything going around her and more than a little unaware as to her surroundings. This seems to be a particular bad personality when you are dealing with police and prosecutors in general but especially in a murder case.

Nobody in Particular: From the Rolling Stones article, it seems that Amanda Knox comes across as being detached from everything going around her and more than a little unaware as to her surroundings. This seems to be a particular bad personality when you are dealing with police and prosecutors in general but especially in a murder case.

I read up about the Knox case recently.  Despite the fact that I started out with the preconceived notion that “where there is smoke, there is usually a fire”, I ended up ASTONISHED by how flimsy the case against her and her boyfriend was.  The fact that this malformed freak of a case even went to trial, to say nothing of it resulting in a conviction, was evidence to me of a mass hysteria directed against women, sexually active teenagers, young women living away from their families, and foreigners.  I mean, apart from the hopelessly tainted DNA, the main piece of evidence against Knox and Sollecito seems to have been that there were no witnesses to confirm their whereabouts on the night of the murder.  Opinions that I’ve read arguing in support of the conviction were also based on the whole “There is no conclusive proof that she is innocent, and no one can confirm where she was every second of that night. She could have done it, therefore she did!”  Considering how many people are in the habit of spending their nights indoors fucking, with no witnesses present and no electronic trail, there are probably millions of sexually active couples in Italy with no alibi for this crime.  I mean, where was the esteemed prosecutor on the night in question?  Maybe he’s the real murderer.

Speaking of the prosecutor, I was equally astonished to read that this is not his first high-profile “Satanic sex” case.  He was previously involved in the Monster of Florence case and similarly built his theory around some Satanic sex ritual; it is now virtually certain that the men who were convicted in that case are likewise innocent.

So, let me get this absolutely right, Manju.  You decide to character-assassinate both Martha Coakley and Janet Reno on a blog which has absolutely nothing to do with either one of them and on a thread which has absolutely nothing to do with either one of them, on the basis that they’re what you call “elite” and on no other basis (when what the claim that they’re “elite” seems to mean to you is not that they belong to the class which runs things, but that they belong to the class which minds the store for the people who run things).  Plus which, you’re a speedy hand with the cut-and-paste.  This is supposed to confound me.

Right.

Okay.  I give.  You win The Enterprising Guy of The Year Award: now carry it home and polish it.

(I speak as a person who’s spent lots of time around born handers-out-of-flyers when I tell you, Manju, that that is your fated occupation.  There’s a printer out there with your name on it and which is lonesome for you: go forth and make friends with it!!  Chop chop!!)

I should add that it’s a shame that Raffaele Sollecito sort of gets lost in the shuffle, with all the focus being on Amanda Knox, though I am happy for him that his conviction was also overturned.  Quite possibly, the fact that he is from southern Italy played a role in his conviction, just like Amanda’s gender played a role in hers.

Comment #55: SS451—do you have stats for that claim?  In my experience, now that the Guidelines are advisory, sentencing judges have tons of discretion and are rarely overturned on appeal unless they made a legal or procedural mistake.

“There is no conclusive proof that she is innocent, and no one can confirm where she was every second of that night. She could have done it, therefore she did!”

Another reason why the American (and any English common law) system is better:  presumption of innocence.  Italy operates under the assumption guilty until proven innocent.  Knox had to prove she didn’t kill Kercher.

That prosecutor has a long history of pulling crackpot theories out of his ass, most notably when trying to track down a serial murderer, who ultimately got away largely thanks to that corrupt fool.  With all the flaws of our justice system, prosecutors whose incompetence allows serial murders to continue and the murderer responsible to get away don’t tend to do well in their careers.

67: Check out Table 56A at the Sentencing Commission’s 2010 Sourcebook: http://www.ussc.gov/Data_and_Statistics/Annual_Reports_and_Sourcebooks/2010/SBTOC10.htm

Basically, government sentencing appeals are vanishingly rare (they show 80 government sentencing appeals total in FY2010, though I don’t know if that includes cross-appeals or not), but when the government does appeal, it is far more successful than defendants, unsurprisingly. 50% reversal rate, 14% partial reversal, and 3.5% remanded. I believe data for prior years are generally consistent, although again the number of these appeals is so small that you have to take the exact percentages with a grain of salt.

on a blog which has absolutely nothing to do with either one of them and on a thread which has absolutely nothing to do with either one of them,

This post opens with; “A thought: this entire case reminds me strongly of the spate of Satanic ritual abuse accusations…” So on a post about modern day witch hunts, I named two witch hunters. So no, you are not upset that I am off-topic. Try again.

You decide to character-assassinate both Martha Coakley and Janet Reno

Clearly you were not aware of their involvement. And that’s fine. No crime in not knowing. But to respond like this after learning the truth…well that demonstrates how people become so detached from reality that they can believe far-fetched narratives like the one being discussed.

They believe what they want to believe.

True, but is that because the judge made a legal or procedural mistake (incorrectly calculated the Guideline range, for example, or took into account a prohibited factor)?  Generally, appealing because the sentence is “too lenient” is a loser.  The government rarely appeals because the case law is really unsupportive—usually, there’s no point in appealing even if the sentence is laughably low by nearly any standard, and so reviewers won’t approve it—again, unless the sentencing court committed some kind of procedural error in determining the sentence.  If you bring fewer appeals, and those appeals have been vetted for likelihood of success, it’s not surprising that your success rate is higher. 

Also curious whether those appeals include cases in which the government appealed because the district court failed to order restitution to the victim(s) of the crime where required by law to do so—I would think so, since to appeal the failure to order restitution is to appeal the sentence.

Oh yeah, I have no doubt that the vast majority of these government sentencing appeals point to procedural problems with the district judge’s Guidelines calculation, or occasionally question the validity of reasons the district judge offered for departing below a correctly-calculated Guidelines range. But of course, these are all claims that the defendant got a sentence was too lenient, just as all defendant sentencing appeals are just claims that they got a sentence that was too harsh. Defendants will usually be able to gin up some supposed procedural error by the district court; you rarely see sentencing appeals that are purely based on substantive reasonableness, even if defendants’ procedural arguments are often of questionable merit.

In any event, in saying that prosecutors can appeal sentences for being too lenient, I did not mean to refer to the difference between substantive and procedural unreasonableness. I was just pointing out that the government has an opportunity to appeal and seek a harsher sentence in the American legal system as in Continental legal systems.

Manju, people are not detached from reality b/c their priorities differ from yours.

Nothing you’ve cited connects directly with the Knox case.  Reno and Coakley weren’t acting like witches or the hunters of witches.  They weren’t engaged in worshipping Satan.  They were lawyers who had theories of which they were too fond and of which they were unwilling to let go.  That does connect indirectly with the Knox case, b/c Amanda Knox’s prosecutors also had theories of which they were too fond (and of which they were unwilling to let go) but the thing is, none of us here, except possibly you, are defending that; quite the contrary.  It’s what we’re objecting to.  Geez. 

Does that help?  All better now?

I feel if more people watched this video, and really thought about it, we’d have a lot fewer false convictions (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc  Defense attorney explains why you should never talk to the cops). 

Knox’s biggest problem is the same as most criminal defendants’ problem in the US.  She talked to the police, and made confusing contradictory statements which were essentially used to railroad her, because the default assumption of juries (even in an inquisitional system) is that if you’re in court, you’re guilty of something.  The satantic stuff is a nice spin on it, but it’s really jsut a twist on classic prosecutor misconduct; the final theory of the crime didn’t involve anything like that.

Nothing you’ve cited connects directly with the Knox case.

I understand you are trying to use Knox as pretext to claim Reno and Cloakly are off-topic, but this is also a thread about other Satanic ritual abuse accusations. Its right there in the first sentence.

Reno and Coakley weren’t acting like witches or the hunters of witches.  They weren’t engaged in worshipping Satan.  They were lawyers who had theories of which they were too fond and of which they were unwilling to let go

When you cling to theory after an overwhelming amount of data contradicts it, you believe in witches. When you make pleas to imprison a witch, even after this:

“after nine months of investigation, the board, reputed to be the toughest in the country, voted 5-0, with one abstention, to commute his sentence. Still more newsworthy was an added statement, signed by a majority of the board, which pointed to the lack of evidence against the Amiraults, and the “extraordinary if not bizarre allegations” on which they had been convicted. Editorials in every major and minor paper in the state applauded the Board’s findings”

…to use Coakley as an example, then you are a modern-day witch hunter.

none of us here, except possibly you, are defending that; quite the contrary.  It’s what we’re objecting to.  Geez. 

At first you didn’t even know “that” existed:

What are you talking about?  Janet Reno’s claim to fame is that she got entangled with the Branch Davidian business in Waco, and Martha Coakley’s is that she may have overreacted to a bomb scare.  Neither of these incidents has eff-all to do with the Amanda Knox case, though both of them can be made to play into the “bitchez aren’t bright” narrative, which is why (I suspect) you’ve decided to bring them up.

After you learn about it, you claim this is character assassination, it has nothing to do with the post, and that these two powerful lib-dems prosecutors are not elites. Apparently, power doesn’t matter.

Now you simultaneously try to maintain this “does connect indirectly with the Knox case, b/c Amanda Knox’s prosecutors also had theories of which they were too fond” but maintain you are not defending that, that I might be, and that this is what you are objecting to.

Yet just moments ago, it didn’t exist, and if it did it was irrelevant, and to mention it is to assassinate the character of those who did it.

DTGslu2K @33, I agree but would add that in the U.S. if you don’t plead guilty and insist on going to trial, your stubborn lack of remorse and unwillingness to accept responsibility are considered good reasons to give you a tougher sentence should you be found guilty.  This government report, http://www.ussc.gov/Legislative_and_Public_Affairs/Congressional_Testimony_and_Reports/Departures/200310_RtC_Downward_Departures/departrpt03.pdf (sorry I can’t get the HTML link to embed) puts the point more positively, saying that cooperation or a good attitude justifies a “downward departure,” but it’s basically a penalty for resisting. 

As for Amanda Knox, woo hoo, that’s a great outcome.  And even though I have those doubts about American criminal justice, I feel sure a USian prosecutor who carried on like this Mignini fellow would have been driven out of office.  Maybe not disbarred like Mike Nifong of Duke lacrosse fame, but gone.

I’m not sure how observing that Amanda Knox didn’t have a strong enough alibi to avoid a trial makes me a “great example of middle class white male privilege”, or makes you think I’m an “example of misogynistic impulse to assume the worst about women”.

I also believe there was enough evidence to charge Raffaele Sollecito based on his lack of an alibi and the manner in which he repeatedly changed his story to the police. He’s male. Does that make me a misandrist? A misanthropist maybe?

Perhaps you don’t know that there are two other roommates, both women, who’s alibi’s did check out and they were never charged with murder. They didn’t change their stories, lie to the police or act suspiciously during the initial investigation by police.

I believe that the prosecutor was batshit crazy and he should be disciplined for the things he did/said during the trial. I’m glad to see that both Raffaele and Amanda have both been found not guilty because of the lack of DNA evidence. I think it’s terrible it took 4 years to happen.

I also believe you can’t tell police that they are not allowed to aggressively pursue viable suspects for fear they will be labeled misogynistic women haters.

The Rolling Stone article is in interesting article written by someone who strongly believes Amanda Knox was always an innocent victim. The author does a good job of explaining their opinion.

I would recommend to someone who wants to learn about what was presented by both the defense and prosecutors, to read the Massei Sentencing Report from the court. If you read it you might have a better understanding on why Amanda and Raffaele where considered viable suspects by the police. It can be found here:

http://truejustice.org/ee/documents/perugia/TheMasseiReport.pdf

I was very pleased by the outcome for Amanda Knox.  Nina Burleigh’s recent book The Fatal Gift of Beauty covers the crime and trial and adds background to the Rolling Stone article people have cited.  Knox kind of became a target because she didn’t “behave appropriately,” because she was American or generally an outsider, because Perugia had ambivalent feelings about its large, mostly non-Italian student body and Mignini is well known for seeing the hand of Satan in seemingly just about everything.  It’s also worth noting that Amanda herself wasn’t “privileged” compared to many—she was from a working class family and earned her own money to pay for her year abroad.  Her whole extended family has gone into enormous debt paying for her defense.  Finally, I don’t recall details but IIRC, at least some of Amanda’s interrogation was done in Italian, which she hardly spoke well when the crime took place—she’d been in Italy about 2 months.  Her interrogation was also not videotaped which is required by law in Italy.  I wouldn’t have any problems visiting Italy itself, but I think I’d give Perugia a pass.

and even though I have those doubts about American criminal justice, I feel sure a USian prosecutor who carried on like this Mignini fellow would have been driven out of office.  Maybe not disbarred like Mike Nifong of Duke lacrosse fame, but gone.

Nifong was an outlier. These Fuckers rarely get punished.

Look at Harry Connick Sr. He may not be as popular as Jr but he’s not exactly Omarosa either. Linda Fairstein still gets invites for margaitas even though she wants the central park non-rapists to go back to prison.  Janet Reno and Martha Coekley were both promoted after their childhood ritual abuse voodoo. They weren’t even Borked, never mind Nifonged.

That’s why Perry can kill at will and it’s a plus. Bubba made it a point to fry a mentally handicapped black man when he successfully sought his party’s nomination. And that’s why we still have an aircraft carrier named after a John Stennis, one pure-evil fucker who prosecuted black men based on confessions he knew were elicited from torture.

The only prosecutor who might get driven out of office is the one who acted honorably…Cyrus Vance.

Martha Coakley, claims of the WSJ aside, was not part of the satanic ritual abuse hysteria.  She was part of a time honored tradition of prosecutors covering up false/bad prosecutions of innocents by setting the wrongly imprisoned free while not admitting their innocence. She’d have done the same thing if the Amiraults had been wrongly convicted of murder. She came into the situation long after the trial and was involved with the issue after the Amiraults were already on their way to being set free. Manju is babbling about bullshit here in his procrustean attempts to fit his personal narratives and hobby horses into any and every situation.

He actually reminds me of squashed, if any of you remember that guy: the same mediocre command of English, the same cutting and pasting, and the same lack of ability to understand social cues regarding when and what to comment on.

Another reason why the American (and any English common law) system is better:  presumption of innocence.  Italy operates under the assumption guilty until proven innocent.  Knox had to prove she didn’t kill Kercher.

This is blatantly false; Italy operates under very similar guidelines to the US, at least de jure. De facto any court system can turn kangaroo if the jury can be convinced to hate the defendant enough.

The Casey Anthony case is yet another example of people’s desire to see a pretty white woman punished overriding their ability to understand facts and evidence.

Uh, what? For both Anthony and Knox, being pretty white women definitely aided their cases. Not that this is a BAD thing; all criminal cases should be put to the standard that theirs were. It’s just, if Knox had been a poor black kid there is NO WAY she would’ve been acquitted, and that sucks.

Now, being an American in Italy, and specifically an Italian town that was much more prudish than she was accustomed to definitely did hurt Knox’s case. And yeah, her conviction had a lot to do with slut-shaming and generally silly forms of prudishness. But that’s an entirely different thing from claiming she lost the original trial because she was a pretty white girl. That’s just silly.

@31 Coakley did actually have involvement with the daycare scandal trails when she was a young procecuter.  That said, most of the people Manju mentions were barely blips on the national right horizon at the time.

Look, Ms. Magazine is an influential journal that helped legitimize the inquisition with this front page story, “Satanic Ritual Abuse Exists—Believe It”. Gloria Steinam, Katha Pollick, Catharine MacKinnon, and Susan Brownmiller were all national figures.

Ideologues are narrow minded. They look for data that confirms their beliefs. For some feminists, far-fetched tales of Satanic Ritual Abuse fit nicely into their critique of the Patriarchy, the traditional family, and belief in rampant incest. Repressed memory syndrome was in particular very helpful because it explained why so few women remembered their incestuous experiences. 

That’s why Bruce Heitman, who was, according to Alexander Cockburn, “a researcher at the Justice Committee in San Diego, founded by Carol Hopkins, and campaigning for the wretched people whose lives had been destroyed by the hysteria over satanic ritual abuse and its later transmutation into recovered memory syndrome”, concluded:

“…prominent believers in satanic ritual abuse were Gloria Steinem, Ms and feminists,. They weren’t part of a larger group. They were central.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/1999/10/26/katha-s-silence/

Manju, you haven’t explained how Jane Swift is a “lib-dem”.

And Jane Swift, the GOP acting gov of MA from the early 2000s? She’s left-leaning?  Yeah.  Right.  Okay.

Oh…I thought she was a Dem. Forgot all about those Weld Republicans. So I ended up naming one prominent repub who was part of the inquisition.

I’m tempted to plead Rino but yeah, you got me.

“But we don’t have anyone as bad as the prosecutor who put Amanda Knox in jail.  He’s on another level.” (Comment #39: dopus dei on 10/04 at 08:51 AM)

How about Harry Connick Sr. and his team of prosecutors? Would you like to chat with John Thompson about that for a few minutes?

Look, I have no interest in defending Italy. I have spent a lot of time there, criticized their shortcomings (e.g. electing and re-electing Berlusconi) and praised their achievements. I’m bothered by knee-jerk reactions like “I’m never going there” after an event that couldn’t possibly define Italy (or any other country, actually) as a whole. If someone stated they’re never visiting the US because Connick and his team kept an innocent man in jail for 18 years and were essentially told that’s OK by SCOTUS, I’d view their reaction as irrational and out of proportion too.

I’m sorry, but Connick’s serious Brady violations are not as nutty as the wild flights of fancy that led to Knox going to jail on suspicion of satanic ritual sex death cult behavior.  Connick is a garden variety New Orleans crook.  You’re conflating a guy who’s corrupt with a guy who’s corrupt and also nuts.

I agree that there’s no particular reason to avoid travel to Italy, just because of this case, if your particular worry is being railroaded for a crime.  They have a higher level of official corruption than we do, according to Transparency International, but as others have said, there’s no death penalty there, they have lower rates of incarceration than we do, and Berlusconi can’t possibly live that much longer.  Plus: culture!

However bad the Italian criminal justice system is, at least Amanda Knox didn’t have to spend the last four years waiting on death row!

One other thing worth pointing out: Perugia is a small hick town not far from Rome. The kind of place where anyone with half a clue has a lot of incentive to get the hell out. Or in other words the kind of place where you may well find halt-witted police with a grudge, and a prosecutor trying to make a name for themselves - whilst everyone more competent in the Italian judiciary is busy face palming and wondering why Italy could be so unlucky to have this case fall into _that_ prosecutor’s lap.

Look, Ms. Magazine is an influential journal…

Really.  Influential with whom?  Never try to pretend, my man, that it’s influential with you.  I am a woman of pretty definite feminist sympathies and I find it impossible not to recognize that Ms. is, as a magazine, definitely second tier (to be generous), and that its spirit is not too far removed from the spirit implicit in Hot Rod and Cat Fancy and other specialty mags aimed at narrow readerships.  (I may get into trouble with some of the people here for saying so, but there it is.)  Except, of course, that over the years, Ms. has probably not been able to raise as much money.

I’m not going to get into an argument with you over what Gloria Steinem’s opinions are.  What I’m going to do is wonder out loud why it is that you expect me to believe that you give a damn about Gloria Steinem’s opinions or, if it comes to that, that (deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties) you give her credit for the ability to have any.  Admiration for Ms. and interest in the thoughts of Gloria Steinem* are not plausible in man of your type.  So I ask myself, what the heck is Manju after?  (I come up with no answer.)

(On second thought, it might make more sense to compare Ms. to minority publications like Native Peoples or Ebony, but I think the rest stands.)

*for “Gloria Steinem” feel free to substitute the name of any other woman Manju doesn’t like; chicks being interchangeable and all.

I agree that there’s no particular reason to avoid travel to Italy, just because of this case, if your particular worry is being railroaded for a crime.

If I were given a trip to USA by a fairy godmother right now, I’d take it, but, depending on which state it was to, I’d feel really stressed out, even scared, while there, because I’m a part black Latin American woman.
When I went to Germany several years ago, I was totally unaware of my existence as someone who possesses race - I was only aware of taking care with my behavior because of the Brazilian woman = whore thing. I ended up being trapped in a streetcar with a guy who yelled at me till the next stop, for being a fucking foreigner who comes to his country to steal their jobs and taxes, and followed me out on the street to go on yelling (in a city with a tourism based economy, no less).
And that guy’s rant is exactly the kind of thing that’s been being made into law in USA these last years, except I don’t think he said anything about me stealing his sperm for anchor babies. I don’t think it’s paranoid of me to worry about both street and police harassment, not to mention airport immigration limbo holding cells.

colorless blue: 
I would assume he thought you were Turkish or African?  I have gotten a few dirty looks in Germany, especially when walking around with my spouse.  He is mostly Irish-Scandenavian and I, funny thing, am mostly German in ethnicity.  Then I would open my mouth and speak SAE or really bad French, and they would blink and go back to being “tourist-customer” polite.  Apparently, they think he looks German and I look Turkish, or so some friends explained.