Our Great United States will soon be confronted with the conundrum of a convicted killer in our midst who must, by a binding international treaty, be extradited to Italy to serve out her sentence of more than two additional decades in prison.
Amanda Knox is a lovely young woman, now rather wealthy due to a four million dollar book deal. Her life is under something of a cloud with the Italian court proceedings still pending, but she lives her life breathing the free, clean air of our beautiful Pacific Northwest.
The popular media have made much of the sensational nature of her Italian trial, her many dubious claims of mistreatment by the Italian and prison authorities, the more unusual aspects of the Italian criminal process (from an American viewpoint), and her constant claims of innocence. And dare I mention the fact that since she is passably pretty - I suspect she would clean up very nicely - she is given kid-glove care by most news outlets.
But there are a couple of disturbing facts that cloud both her present and her future. One is the binding treaty that requires the U.S. Government to extradite her upon the rightful demand of the Italian authorities. The other is that, for anyone actually looking at the evidence, she is guilty as hell. Indeed, it is impossible to come to any other conclusion, based on even the most rudimentary examination of the facts of the case. Fuck DNA evidence; you don't need it.
She cannot account for her whereabouts at the time of the murder. She initially told authorities that she was with her boyfriend, but that story blew up in her face when her boyfriend admitted they had been at the apartment. She emphatically and convincingly blamed her boss, one Signore Lamumba, who spent two weeks in jail based on her baseless accusation, then was cleared by the testimony of a dozen or so witnesses who saw him at his restaurant the whole time.
She and her boyfriend staged a preposterous faked burglary, then called the police to investigate in a transparent attempt to create evidence of an unknown intruder. The police, seeing obvious evidence of a staged break-in quickly called her lie and she admitted it.
While the police were on the scene, she lied about the dead roommate "always" keeping her bedroom door locked, in an obvious attempt to explain away the locked door and in the vain hope that they wouldn't force it open. While they were forcing the door open, she and her boyfriend (the other murderer) were hiding in a corner of the apartment.
According to the medical examiner, the victim was stabbed multiple times by more than one attacker (one man, an African vagrant, is currently serving a sentence for the crime), and there were only three people in the apartment at the time of the deadly assault. Do the math.
The infamous knife had been soaked in bleach, but still contained traces of the victim's DNA on the blade and traces of...let's see, who could it be?... on the handle.
The words, "open & shut" come to mind. The Italian criminal justice system may seem a little bizarre from this distance, and the Italian press comported itself disgracefully during the trial and its aftermath. Maybe the prison guards were rude to her. But this bitch deserves a one-way ticket back to Italy.
No doubt, she will be able to marshal the resources to build an all-star legal team to fight extradition, and we will surely see a long-lasting circus of posturing before the final decision is made. I personally am looking forward to see our posturing piss-ant of a Secretary of State trying to worm out of this clear obligation without embarrassing himself and/or the United States of America. He will make the final decision on the extradition.
Goody.
Amanda Knox is a lovely young woman, now rather wealthy due to a four million dollar book deal. Her life is under something of a cloud with the Italian court proceedings still pending, but she lives her life breathing the free, clean air of our beautiful Pacific Northwest.
The popular media have made much of the sensational nature of her Italian trial, her many dubious claims of mistreatment by the Italian and prison authorities, the more unusual aspects of the Italian criminal process (from an American viewpoint), and her constant claims of innocence. And dare I mention the fact that since she is passably pretty - I suspect she would clean up very nicely - she is given kid-glove care by most news outlets.
But there are a couple of disturbing facts that cloud both her present and her future. One is the binding treaty that requires the U.S. Government to extradite her upon the rightful demand of the Italian authorities. The other is that, for anyone actually looking at the evidence, she is guilty as hell. Indeed, it is impossible to come to any other conclusion, based on even the most rudimentary examination of the facts of the case. Fuck DNA evidence; you don't need it.
She cannot account for her whereabouts at the time of the murder. She initially told authorities that she was with her boyfriend, but that story blew up in her face when her boyfriend admitted they had been at the apartment. She emphatically and convincingly blamed her boss, one Signore Lamumba, who spent two weeks in jail based on her baseless accusation, then was cleared by the testimony of a dozen or so witnesses who saw him at his restaurant the whole time.
She and her boyfriend staged a preposterous faked burglary, then called the police to investigate in a transparent attempt to create evidence of an unknown intruder. The police, seeing obvious evidence of a staged break-in quickly called her lie and she admitted it.
While the police were on the scene, she lied about the dead roommate "always" keeping her bedroom door locked, in an obvious attempt to explain away the locked door and in the vain hope that they wouldn't force it open. While they were forcing the door open, she and her boyfriend (the other murderer) were hiding in a corner of the apartment.
According to the medical examiner, the victim was stabbed multiple times by more than one attacker (one man, an African vagrant, is currently serving a sentence for the crime), and there were only three people in the apartment at the time of the deadly assault. Do the math.
The infamous knife had been soaked in bleach, but still contained traces of the victim's DNA on the blade and traces of...let's see, who could it be?... on the handle.
The words, "open & shut" come to mind. The Italian criminal justice system may seem a little bizarre from this distance, and the Italian press comported itself disgracefully during the trial and its aftermath. Maybe the prison guards were rude to her. But this bitch deserves a one-way ticket back to Italy.
No doubt, she will be able to marshal the resources to build an all-star legal team to fight extradition, and we will surely see a long-lasting circus of posturing before the final decision is made. I personally am looking forward to see our posturing piss-ant of a Secretary of State trying to worm out of this clear obligation without embarrassing himself and/or the United States of America. He will make the final decision on the extradition.
Goody.
