The Trial of Amanda Knox (2009)

by Douglas O. Linder (2020)

It was supposed to be a year of growth, learning and exploration.  Amanda Knox hoped to experience the world beyond her middle-class West Seattle neighborhood and learn Italian.  She also considered her prior sexual experience limited—four guys, all in committed relationships—and wanted to change that.  For her year abroad, she wanted, she wrote later, “sex to be about empowerment and pleasure.”  But what, for Amanda, was supposed to be a dream year studying at the University for Foreigners in Perugia, Italy, turned into a nightmare. 

When Amanda’s British roommate, Meredith Kercher, was discovered brutally murdered, Italian authorities leapt to the unlikely conclusion that Amanda, her Italian boyfriend, and a third person barely known to Amanda, committed the crime as the result of a sex game gone horribly wrong.  For the press, from Italy to Britain to America and beyond, it was a story too good to pass up. 

The Amanda Knox trial reveals problems with the Italian justice system, but it reveals much more than that.  It is a fascinating study of how people steeped in one culture can draw mistaken conclusions about the behavior of someone from a different culture.  In addition, the Amanda Knox trial once again shows how miscarriages of justice can occur when authorities focus on a suspect—how confirmation bias can make innocent acts of that person seem incriminatory and send common sense flying out the window.

From Seattle to Perugia

Amanda, in her own words, began her high school career at Seattle Prep as “the quirky kid who hung out with the sulky manga-readers, the ostracized gay kids, and the theater geeks” and ended it as something of a soccer jock known for her blunt manner and general “kookiness.” A friend described her as goofy, naïve, and trusting.  In college, at the University of Washington, her friends were mostly “off-beat” and male.  She date “a Mohawked, kilt-wearing, outdoorsy student named DJ.”  She described herself as a hippie, enjoyed rock climbing, hiking, yoga, and theater.  She made the Dean’s list while working as a barista and as an art gallery receptionist.  Her closest college friend, Madison Paxton, said Amanda could sometimes “be loud and offensive,” but at the same time was always “non-confrontational.’

Amanda’s parents, Edda and Curt, divorced when she and her sister, Deanna, were young. Amanda announced her decision to spend a year abroad in Italy at a rare two-parent lunch in April 2007.  She expected her free-spirited and remarried mother to be on board, her more “linear thinking” and practical father she was less sure of.  But both agreed to Amanda’s proposal and the planning began.

Finding a place to stay for the year in Perugia turned out to be a surprisingly easy decision.  She fell in love with and agreed to rent the first place she checked out, an upstairs bedroom in a two-level stone, 300-year-old villa on top of a hill and close to the university.  The villa at No. 7, Via della Pergola was occupied by a number of other young people, both male and female.  Men lived on the basement level, while two Italian women, Laura and Filomena, roomed together on the upper level.  Space for one additional woman remained unrented.  Amanda’s initial reaction was that the villa “felt like a happy place.”  As satisfied as Amanda was with her new lodgings, it was located close to a seedy urban piazza frequented by drug dealers.

Meredith Kercher

Shortly after renting the room in Perugia, while traveling with her sister in Germany, Amanda learned the name of a new roommate: Meredith Kercher, a British exchange student. . . .Continued