A Rock To Tie A String Around

Amanda Knox is either innocent and there has been a tremendous miscarriage of justice, or she’s the scariest sociopath to make international headlines in a long time. I realize that statement sounds obvious, either she’s guilty or innocent, and in a case like Amanda Knox’s, there’s no gray area. Either she tortured, tormented and eventually slashed Meredith Kercher’s throat in cold blood, or she is completely, totally innocent.

I’ve read a lot of blogs and articles by legal types who make the point that if this case took place in South Central, Los Angeles, and the girl being accused was black and poor instead of white and upper middle class, this case would never have made the papers. Instead, that Amanda Knox would have been convicted two years ago and probably would be facing life in prison, not just twenty-six years.

They’re probably right. However, it’s all a moot point, because the truth of the matter is that it didn’t happen in State Street, Chicago – it happened in Italy, to an angel faced girl next door, who might just be a psychotic murderer.

Let me be clear, my legal savvy comes almost exclusively from Law and Order, SVU with a few drops of A Few Good Men, To Kill A Mockingbird, and Matlock on the side. So feel free to set me straight but – the Italian justice system’s willingness to let the prosecution offer ‘theoretical circumstantial evidence’ seems really wacky. I can’t imagine the blond District Attorney from SVU letting that one slide by.

In short, the prosecution was allowed to offer up their theory of a possible scenario wherein Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede tortured and killed Kercher while tormenting her with perverse sexual comments. Even though there was little to no basis for their theory, the prosecution was allowed to extrapolate upon things they thought Knox could possibly have said in the moment.

Maybe, they’re right, maybe their guesses were far milder than what Meredith Kercher actually experienced in her last moments. But maybe they’re flat out wrong too. The idea of theoretical circumstantial evidence hits me a bit like the spectral evidence that they allowed during the Salem Witch Trials. Back in 1692, since it was a theocracy, they allowed spectral evidence during the trial. Essentially, it means evidence that doesn’t have any basis in reality. I could go in and say that my neighbor appeared to me in a dream and punched me in the jaw and then I woke up and had a pimple in the same place, so it was obviously my neighbor’s fault. While this sounds crazy, it’s how they were able to hang twenty-nine people.

I think I watch too many horror movies, but Amanda Knox scares the crap out of me. She scares me more than John Gotti – ruthless crime boss murderer, she scares me more than Aileen Wuornos – drug riddled psychotic, she even scares me more than Charles Manson who encapsulates a little of both. Possibly, because with these three, I feel like I would have seen them coming. Amanda Knox looks like someone I would have hired to babysit my son, someone I would have loved for my son to date if he were twenty years old. She looks like someone I would trust.

I think inherently, we’re all capable of murder. I don’t necessarily believe that murderers are made of different stuff than the rest of us; they just have a few triggers that most of us never have to deal with, namely opportunity and willing accomplices. It’s a little like that Seinfeld episode where Elaine is contemplating what would happen if she murdered the cable guy. I think everyone has a moment like that at some point. It’s not so much the evidence of murderous rage, rather astonishment that a stranger would trust us so much as to come into our house, defenseless, and put themselves in a vulnerable position such as half in and half out of our kitchen cabinet while they fix our sink.

I’ve always wondered if plumbers, cable guys and the lot think about this stuff before they enter strange houses. If that were me, and granted I’m a little morbid at times, I would be wondering if every job at a strange house was going to be my last. I would be wondering if I was going to be on the evening news a few weeks down the road as the cops are digging me out of the backyard.

My guess is that if most people thought like this, we wouldn’t have cable guys, plumbers or the people from the city who check your furnace and relight your pilot light.

I think we forget how breakable we are. The Talented Mr. Ripley illustrates this rather well. Tom Ripley wasn’t a murder until he accidentally broke Dickie Greenleaf. But the Tom Ripley’s are way scarier than the Joe Pesci’s anyday. I would never have trusted Tommy DeVito. But Tom Ripley has a very Amanda Knoxlike quality.

I guess I’ll have to wait until SVU does a show based on this case to really see the inner workings of the court system. Till then, my thought are with the families of both the victim and the accused.