The Amanda Knox Murder Case
In 2007, the twenty year old Amanda Knox left her hometown of Seattle, Washington and her school, the University of Washington, to study abroad for a year in Perugia, Italy at the University for Foreigners. She planned on studying Italian, German, and creative writing. Those dreams were quickly dashed however. She lived in a flat with Meredith Kercher, also an exchange student from England, and two other Italian women. Unfortunately, on the morning of November 1st, 2007, Meredith Kercher was found murdered in the house by Knox, who had been at her boyfriend’s house the night before when the murder had occurred. Five days later Amanda Knox and her boyfriend of two weeks, Raffaele Sollecito, were arrested for the murder. During the four-year long nightmare Knox was held in an Italian prison as she fought for her innocence. In 2009, she and her boyfriend were found guilty of murder, sexual assault, and simulating a burglary in the first grade. However, Knox appealed the verdict and on October 3rd, 2011, the conviction was overturned and Knox was free to finally make the long journey home back to Seattle (Fisher, 2010).
This case was a highly unethical in many ways. There are a myriad of reasons why this case was mishandled from the initial evidence collection all the way up to and continuing through the trial. Among the many miscarriages of justice, Amanda Knox was interrogated for long amounts of time without a lawyer present, interrogations in which she was beaten, lied to, and deprived of any food, water, or breaks. The prosecutor Giuliano Mignini produced a satanic sex game gone wrong for the trial that had no evidentiary backing, a scenario he had used and lost with in past cases. A jury that wasn’t sequestered and thus allowed to hear and read all the depictions of “Foxy Knoxy” in the media, and a judge that denied Knox house arrest because "In such a situation the danger of repetition of the crime is certainly very high and...