Italian Court Overturn’s Knox Conviction
Amanda Knox got word today she is a free woman as Italy’s highest court overturned her conviction. There is no doubt she is a happy woman. The Meredith Kercher family, however, must feel disappointed.
While I think the Italian courts made a mockery of the case with wild speculation and outlandish claims that were not based on evidence, but rather whimsy, I still don’t believe Knox was innocent and uninvolved. There are so many elements over the years that give me great pause with her and make me not trust her.
I believe she knew a lot more than she ever revealed and still do.
Feel free to click on her name in the tag above to see some of the posts I have written over the years.
If enough people have interest, I can re-summarize why I don’t believe her. Let me know if you are interested below.
I hope Meredith Kercher’s family finds peace.
Very interested to hear your final thoughts!
I am interested too!
Absolutely interested. I feel the same way as you do. She has now never had to fess up publicly what she saw or did. Must feel good for her right now. Some people get away with stuff.
Am with you Eyes – followed this since 2007 and breaks my heart she got off. She’s guilty, along with Rudy and Raff. Surprise! Only the black guy gets locked up. No, this case isn’t just about race – far more complex than that – but it’s about the benefits of being white, good looking, female and American. RIP Meredith. Please give us your thoughts Eyes xxxx
I agree she was probably involved. I think in the end the Italians just wanted it to go away and to avoid the political mess that extradition might have brought on. The result of PR, political pressure, and strong circumstantial evidence but moderate to weak forensics.
I’m interested. Here’s an interview where she expresses her relief and joy. http://www.euronews.com/2015/03/28/amanda-knox-joy-as-murder-conviction-overturned/
I wasn’t sure either way until this morning. Listen to this practised vibrato: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/54614942/acting.mp3
Totally missing from Knox’s “thank-you” speech is any anger that she was (as she claims) falsely accused and for four years falsely imprisoned. She even says at one point “I’m grateful [for the decision]” and “I’m the lucky one”. Lucky? Would an innocent person truly choose that word in this situation? There’s much more evidence beyond language use (Knox’s DNA was found co-mingled with the victim’s blood in five places, for example) but nevertheless I found her choice of words and lack of anger after the acquittal very telling.
I’d also be interested in your summary, Eyes!
Her word choice was that of someone who has focused on forgiveness; on somehow managing to be the bigger person, and being grateful for every minute she’s had that’s been spent free. Those were the words of a mature woman who didn’t get bogged down in pettiness or anger. Her words were gracious and compassionate. She didn’t show anger or rage at her circumstances but rather handled it with grace, and THAT is evidence of her guilt to you?
Her words were gracious and compassionate?
Amanda also said, that she was “lucky.” How in the world would an innocent person feel “lucky” when her friend is death? The word “luck” means something much different that what she’s talking about here.
Eyes For Lies has written extensively about Amanda’s media interviews. EFL has repeatedly pointed out inconsistencies in Amanda’s behavior, and answers. That’s what most of us are relying on.
I don’t think being angry about being through all this as a innocent person can be considered “petty”. I do not think not being upset about injustice imposed on you = maturity. If she is innocent and was giving this interview with a “FINALLY screw every one who thought I was guilty, what happen to my friend was horrible and I can’t even believe I had to go through all this to prove my innocence. I am not a violent person and it drives me crazy that ANYONE thinks I could have done this. etc…” attitude It would actually be understandable in my opinion.
You seem to think it is gracious for her to say that she is the lucky one when her friend was MURDERED. Lucky? Oh, her friend, she was unlucky. Who thinks like that? We aren’t talking about winning a car or the lottery here. We are talking about a lost life!
If my friend was murdered, I would be devastated still and would never feel lucky no matter what. Now add to that, if I was wrongly accused in her murder, it would be tragedy! Times two!! Maturity doesn’t equal ignoring all the injustices that “supposedly” occurred to Amanda and acting happy. It’s like you are saying two wrongs — they make a right. Not in most people’s books. I’m sorry.
“Who thinks like that?” You are assuming that her brain is functioning normally in the media spotlight when she surely has been given instructions of how to try to behave. I think the context of her speech is a vital clue – many of us would be terrified when doing such a speech. A nervous person under pressure might use a word like “lucky” on the spur of the moment.
In her interviews, Amanda has not given us any indication that her brain is NOT functioning normally. She’s handled media interviews quite well.
I watched one interview she did on NBC. I remember this specifically. She was self sensoring when being formally interviewed. Her speech was disjointed. She was thinking on her feet. She was using odd phrasing. She had to stop and think, to answer.
(When people tell the truth, the truth flows freely from them. They don’t have to think about what happened. They know what happened.)
Yet, when she was part of another short segment, in the Today shows “Orange Room,” the spotlight was NOT on the murder, but something else. Her conversation, mannerisms flowed freely. There was no stop and start hesitation with her words. She smiled easily. It was such a sharp contrast to the interview that it was like I was watching two different people.
“When people tell the truth …. They know what happened.”
Based on what experts such as Daniel Kahneman and Scott Lilienfeld claim, I don’t think I or any other witness or participant KNOWS what happened in any given situation. I think that any incident can lead to a variety of different eyewitness accounts. I think that appearing dubious in one’s attempt to recall to the best of one’s ability just what did happen can be over-interpreted as guilt. Of course, I might be wrong, but I’m entitled to my opinion.
Were Daniel Kahneman and Scott Lillienfeld tested in the wizards project? Do they have the same skill as EFL?
I believe you are discounting EFL skill in detecting deception. I take in consideration her track record.
In EFL opinion, Amanda’s on camera interviews have been consistent. In EFL opinion, in every interview, Amanda has not told us all she knows about what happened the night Meredith died. In other words, she’s not been truthful.
Yes, “she’s not being truthful” – no problem with that. There’s no doubt that EFL, Ekman and a few others are amazingly skilled at lie detection.
My comment related not to lie detection, but to the interpretation after the lie detection. I objected to your speculation that people like Amanda definitely “know what happened”. Elizabeth Loftus’s experiments show that eyewitnesses see things differently from each other – they do not “know what happened”. Consider the massive difficulties in the field of Repressed Memory and False Memories especially w.r.t. childhood abuse – are people lying if their brains recall a memory which is false but which their particular brain thinks is true?
Kahneman and Lilienfeld are psychologists who win Nobel Prizes and/or write textbooks used right now at universities. My point is that, based on the information that such people are currently gathering about how the brain works and how memory and vision really work, witnesses do not “know what happened”. By the way, I think Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow, though not specifically dealing at all with the topic of lying, is an essential part of our ongoing quest to learn more about why we lie. We’re getting a bit off-topic, so I will leave it there
I agree that she knew more than she was telling. I don’t think this was a stranger. I think with the attempted clean-up, the taking and discarding of the cellphones, and many other clues points to Amanda being there. I don’t know that she was in on the murder, however. I think she may have gone in there to steal Meredith’s money, and things got out of hand.
She has paid and will pay a tremendous price for what happened. She spent her young adult years sitting in prison, and this will follow her for the rest of her life!
She also benefitted from PR management.
Thank you Eyes, for your post on this ruling! After seeing the headline of Knox’s ruling, I headed straight over here to your blog. There are so many reasons that Amanda Knox is clearly involved and guilty. My first reaction to the news was one of saddened disbelief. It’s hard to believe that this is being hailed as a good PR move for Italy. Justice is truly hard to find.
Everyone reacts differently to different things. I would be relieved for sure if found innocent of something I was in fact innocent of but I would LIVID that it took this long and angrier still I spent years in prison for it. Her hand on her heart, being so overwhelmed she has false starts to sentences/stutters and pauses for dramatic effect seems so obviously fake. She comes off more excited for the attention being given to her in this moment then feeling anything about what happened.
Also, since there is such a large number of people who don’t believe her I think she would have a little more “screw the haters” attitude.
In the other video, I think where all comments are closed, there was a different camera angle and a wider view.
When the reporter asks for a word for the Kercher family, the mother freezes looking at Amanda and the man on the right and woman on the left act twitchy and exchange hidden communication.
I’m the lucky one! What a mental / emotional disconnect.
The trouble with this nonsense is that the poor victim disappears into the background.
Regarding those words “I’m the lucky one.”
SUPPOSE Amanda AND Knox were BOTH in a situation where their lives were in danger. After fighting for their lives, Meredith dies and Amanda lives. Would Amanda still feel “lucky” or would it be more reasonable for her to feel ‘survivor’s guilt?’
Just thinking out loud here.
Hi Sprocket, in your hypothetical situation I myself would feel lucky, as in lucky to be alive, even if I had done something to aid that outcome. But at the same time I’d feel terrible for my friends death and I’d be helping to identify the murderer!
I don’t see why Amanda would feel ‘survivor’s guilt’ as she doesn’t seem to show feelings of guilt. Presumably if Amanda was innocent she could just as easily have been in Meredith’s position but for chance. In that case, in her position, I would still feel lucky to be alive and sad for my friend as it was just luck that meant I was still alive – but I’d be concerned to find the actual killer.
Amanda’s last words in the video:
“She deserved so much in this life…um…I’ve…I’m the lucky one.”
She acts as if she’s ending with a deeply felt statement of her emotions. But she says something so obvious that perhaps there’s another meaning. The statement could be taken as being self-centered and callous. This is a total contradiction to her professed statement and we probably pick up on that. Could a person say something so callous when they’re genuinely connected to their sadness?
She may as well be saying let the party begin, which is what Eyes was commenting on about her statement fitting in with winning the lottery.
I would expect to see a lingering sense of mortal fear in that kind of scenario. Put yourself into that situation with a friend of yours, where you survived and your friend were brutally murdered. I don’t think “lucky” is the first word that would pop into your head after that kind of experience. Nor the second or third word for that matter. I think most people who’d gone through something like that would be concerned that whatever luck might have been involved could just run out at any moment, and the response would be something like a pathological avoidance of anything that might alter that lucky streak. I would expect PTSD, avoidance, paranoia, isolation, anxiety, or many other things along those lines.
Survivor’s guilt would certainly be possible in that kind of scenario, especially if the survivor had done something that they knew or believed gave them an edge and/or denied that same edge to their friend. Survivor’s guilt would probably be more likely in a scenario where the survivor was aware of some choice or action on their part that not only aided their survival, but more importantly, could be reasonably believed to have undermined the other person’s survival– there would be a clear emotional attachment to the event. People usually feel guilt (either at the time or later, after the fact) over doing something that they perceive to have been in some way unfair or unjust– like taking a flight with a friend where one of you can be upgraded to first class, but not both of you, and you really would like to have that experience, so you convince your friend to let you take it, on a plane that later crashes and the people outside of first class died but people in first class survived– something random, something arbitrary, something unearned, something unfair, something inequitable, something where they had a hand in the outcome, or those sorts of things.
Just to comment on survivor’s guilt Keith. I think such guilt is often natural but something that really needs to be overcome otherwise that sense of guilt is life destroying. A person may need counselling or whatever but you need to come out of it with a ‘I did the right thing’ or ‘I didn’t do anything wrong’, ‘I’m lucky to be alive’, ‘I survived’, ‘I made it’, ‘I did the best I could’. Those aren’t things that came to your mind immediately but I think they can be very useful later to overcome the burden of guilt.
But I don’t believe you need to say these out loud, not unless you were pressed by someone or if you were speaking confidentially with someone.
And what Amanda said, with the unusual twist on the phrase, without any real pressure to elaborate, shows a lack of consideration for Meredith or anyone that’s lost anyone in such circumstances in my opinion.
I’m very interested,
because you almost always are spot on and because I disagree to some extent.
What would I do if I were in Amanda’s shoes at this interview? I would do
exactly what my minders tell me to do, in front of the worldwide media. Totally
aware that “the case is not closed”, I would do “my best”
to express how grateful and possibly even lucky I feel, so that the Italians
are not as likely to pursue me in future. I would try so hard to pretend to have no anger nor any negative feelings towards those who might re-open the case against me, that I would have difficulty behaving normally.
I might glance at my mother and other minders
who would stay very near to me, I might even follow instructions by
vocalizing a desire to go back to Italy in order to make the Italians feel that
I do not hold any grudge against Italy. Every word and action in my performance
would be stage-managed in order to minimize the chances of them re-opening the
case. If I were innocent, then doing “my best” would be “bad
acting” because I’m not a very good liar. If I were guilty, my acting
might be better because acting and pretending come more naturally to me. If I
have a condition such as Aspergers (as some people think I do – a deliberate
double entendre), then my performance would be flat, lacking real emotion and
thus much criticized. What I see is bad acting by Amanda at a media performance
while the matter may still be legally unfinished. I think the badness of her
acting points slightly more towards her innocence than any guilt of being a
cold-blooded murder. Guilt perhaps of something else – Sprocket may have
guessed it – who knows?
I totally admire the skills of Ekman and you,
but this interview reminds me of Lindy Chamberlain. When she was freed in 1986,
Lindy did not cry in front of the media, not knowing if it was all over. Twenty
six years later in 2012, when she was finally at long last cleared forever and
it was all over – only then did Lindy cry and allow her real emotions to be on
display.
I can’t find any substantial footage from her (Lindy’s) release in 1986, although I think I’ve found very brief clips in news reports following the 2012 developments, and while she wasn’t speaking, she was definitely bearing the weight of what all she had been through even in just a clip of her walking past the cameras. Amanda Knox has never shown any of that in any of the interviews or clips of her that I’ve seen.
I also don’t put much stock in the Asperger’s claims for Amanda. People with Asperger’s still have emotions and are still human beings. Their minds work differently so they notice different things and it can alter the way they experience events or the kinds of things they notice about them, but their responses to them are still visible and understandable within those contexts, even if they’re atypical.
What I mean by that is that a high enough functioning autistic person can still explain what they’re responding to and why, and those pieces will still fit together logically from their perspective, and Amanda has never been able to do that in any of what I’ve seen. Her responses have been atypical to what she’s SAID, and it’s that incongruity that makes it clear that she hasn’t been open and honest about the case. With her, the pieces have never fit. We don’t know WHY that is, but we can safely conclude that there has been a lack of candor and honesty on her part, for whatever reason.
I thought those with Aspergers were known for their integrity and honesty, so that doesn’t fit with Amanda.
I can’t speak for everyone with Asperger’s, but for myself, I tend to be very honest and I value my integrity, but if you ask me, people with Asperger’s are no different than people without, other than that they have a different way of thinking, and I think that with this different way of thinking, in most cases where a neurotypical person might lie, a person with Asperger’s would not because with the way they think, they don’t see any reason to. But they may lie in other situations for reasons that a neurotypical person might never even think of, so a neurotypical person might not lie where someone with Asperger’s might, if that makes sense.
I have Asperger’s, and when I was a kid, I would lie, but not usually with the intent of misleading or being dishonest. The reasons I’d lie were generally because telling the truth would have required an awful lot more work in trying to explain something that I knew would be futile anyway, and so I’d lie in a way which would ultimately produce the same outcome as being honest and doing all that work in order to spare taxing myself with all of that unnecessary effort. And then there were also a few times where I did lie in order to mislead or be dishonest, or for basically selfish reasons, and I see those instances as falling short of what I really should be. They were legitimately dishonest and selfish, and I think they reflect poorly on my character, and I’m not proud of them, which is why I acknowledge them and own them, because I’d really like not to repeat those kinds of mistakes for the rest of my life, and whitewashing myself doesn’t really push me to change or grow from that.
Thanks. What I have heard aligns with what you’ve said and you’ve also given more details. I’m not sure if many non-Aspergers would rate themselves as very honest and valuing integrity what to speak of being so concerned about true misleading or dishonesty.
Based on what I’ve seen I’m inclined to think most people think dishonesty is part of living in the world.
Many people who know me think I have Aspergers (I like to ask them if they think I do) but I fall just short in Simon Baron Cohen’s online quiz to test if you have Aspergers. This discussion makes me even more hopeful that Eyes will re-summarize lies that Amanda has done, because I’m unaware of any that suggest her involvement in Rudy’s killing of Meredith. Admittedly, I’ve hardly ever looked at anything to do with this case (except on this website).
Please go back and read all of my posts on Amanda Knox. They will show you all of why I don’t believe her. I haven’t seen one interview where she wasn’t filled with inconsistencies. Not one.
Regarding acting. Innocent people can put on a brave face and be grateful etc… They can be normal but reserved, straightforward. They may even be worried or fearful for the future but they don’t feel the need to act perfectly. They do what they have to do. I’m guessing that’s more like what Lindy Chamberlain would have been like. She never changed her story, even though it seemed bizarre. And THIRTY years later she was still wanting more than her ‘presumed innocence’ and she got it.
Somehow I can’t see Amanda doing that.
“They do what they have to do.” Some innocent people do, but others don’t – for various reasons. Everyone’s different. Eyes has pointed out that Amanda might be very different and that might be a factor that could explain her behaviour innocently. We simply don’t know.
Incorrect, Peter. Please don’t put words in my mouth. I have not said Amanda is different and that might be a factor that could explain her innocent behavior anywhere.
Peter I was just going to say I don’t think Eyes said that but she’s already replied. Not that I’m trying to be the Mouth for Eyes or anything :))
She was not just involved, she was the ring leader and caused the fatal wound. This case has a a lot of evidence against her and it’s sick those two are free and the black guy is in jail, when he is probably the least guilty of the 3.
I follow this blog occasionally. Why are the blogs not in posting order? This should be upfront – it is back on page 7 tucked in with far older posts.