Meredith Kercher's mother, Arline Kercher is shocked and dismayed by the outcome of the Amanda Knox case in Italy. As we all know, Meredith Kercher was brutally murdered in November of 2007. Amanda Knox was one of Ms. Kercher’s roommates and reported a burglary and became a suspect when Ms. Kercher’s body was found.
After an intense four day interrogation without legal counsel she implicated herself and a man named Patrick Lumumba, a man who owned the bar where she worked. Mr. Lumumba was 
arrested along with Ms. Knox and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito. It was then discovered that Ms. Knox’s confession unraveled when police realized that Mr. Lumumba was not at the crime scene but there was forensic evidence proving a man named Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast native who had been raised in Perugia had been there.
The evidence clearly pointed to Rudy Guede and then, in a deal for a lighter sentence, Mr. Guede implicated Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. There was no real evidence indicating that the two of them had been a part of this crime, other than the discredited and coerced confession and the testimony of Rudy Guede which had been ‘bought’ for a lighter sentence.
Amanda Knox, who was quite young and immature and not that fluent with the language during the first trial did not quite get a sense of the seriousness of things and behaved like someone very immature. She got the nickname “Foxy Knoxy” and was convicted. She ended up spending four years in an Italian jail and grew up very fast and became fluent in Italian. She won on an appeal. In the bizarre Italian justice system, the appeal was overturned and a new trial, sans Ms. Knox was held and she was convicted. Again, this was appealed and overturned. Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito have been cleared of the crime and Rudy Guede, to whom all the evidence always pointed, is serving a light sentence for the murder.
Arline Kercher has always believed that Amanda Knox was guilty of murdering her daughter, Meredith. I suspect she believes this because the prosecutors and the police convinced her that Ms. Knox was guilty despite the lack of evidence against Amanda Knox.
I feel for Arline Kercher as she probably does not believe there has been adequate justice for the murder of her daughter. She’s probably correct. Tragically, by a lot of circumstances, all of her hopes and aspirations for that justice was based on the conviction of Amanda Knox. The problem was, and I really do believe this, Amanda Knox was never the killer. Young and foolish as she may have been at the time, she was not a killer. Young and foolish is not illegal unless one does something bad while being young and foolish.
The tragedy of all this for Arline Kercher is multi-leveled.
On the first level, she lost her daughter who she loved dearly. She can never get Meredith back and that is a horrible reality for her.
On the next level, she put her hope in faulty prosecutors and police who arrested and convicted the people they wanted to arrest and convict, and made a deal with the one person they needed to convict to get those convictions. I was always a fan of the show “CSI’ and I love Gil Grissom’s rule, ‘you go where the evidence leads you and not where you want to go.’
Lastly, so many people who lose loved ones like this believe that their pain will be relieved when there is a conviction and justice is done. We see this a great deal with executions when victim’s loved ones are seeking closure with the killer’s death only to find there is no closure. The relief from the pain of loss comes usually from the faith that one we love is in a better place with God; not in earthly justice.
I am happy for Amanda Knox and I wish her a good life. My heart breaks for Arline Kercher and I pray she can find the peace of God which passes all understanding.
No comments:
Post a Comment