Why is a Seattle high school so strongly defending a former student accused of murder?

[pnwmom]

Last edited Wed Mar 25, 2015, 06:34 PM - Edit history (3)

Because they know the real person. Because they know that a few short weeks of indulging in pot and romance in Italy didn't change her from the sweet, kind person they knew to a female Charles Manson. It didn't turn the caring girl -- a non-Catholic scholarship student who had managed to convince Catholic school administrators to allow its first gay-straight alliance -- into a pathological narcissist.

With all its incessant digging, no media source has ever found a single person in Seattle -- who actually knew the real Amanda -- who believed she was capable of murder or even assault. Not a single one. No enemy, anywhere. No one even willing to take money to lie about her. No one who'd even seen a hint of violence. Her only encounter with the police before this was as one of the hosts at a college party -- the person who signed the ticket for a noise violation.

The first appeals court got it right: there wasn't a bit of physical evidence placing her at the crime scene; or any other evidence, except for the testimony of an addle-brained heroin addict, a professional witness for the prosecution who couldn't keep his days straight -- and actually alibied her. (He testified that he saw her outside the cottage for the whole period of time in which the murder took place inside.) And the forced, middle-of-the-night "confession" (which wasn't taped, despite that being a requirement in Italy) wasn't a confession at all. After the police insisted they knew the girls had been at the cottage with the bar owner, Patrick, Mandy finally said she "confusedly remembered" being in the kitchen, covering her ears, while hearing Meredith's screams coming from her bedroom. And a few hours later, she withdrew the statement, saying that it wasn't real to her, and no one should rely on it. But it was too late. They'd already arrested her and there was no going back.

Posted on the Seattle Preparatory website since Amanda's and Raffaele's acquittal in 2011:

http://www.seaprep.org/page.aspx?pid=712

Official Statement on the Amanda Knox Verdict

Seattle Prep is grateful to the Italian judiciary for its courage in reversing the wrongful conviction of Amanda Knox for the murder of Meredith Kercher and joyfully awaits Amanda’s return to Seattle.

We are also grateful to the many parents, alumni/ae and friends of Prep who stood with us in our support of Amanda and her family throughout Amanda’s imprisonment. Finally, while we are delighted that Amanda will be rejoining her family, we remain mindful that the Kercher family continues to mourn the loss of their beloved daughter and our thoughts and prayers are with them.

http://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-profiles/articles/seattle-prep-amanda-knox-1210

Johnson, a 30-year teaching veteran, doesn’t watch television. And in the midst of grading student essays she’d missed the newspaper coverage about the Seattle Prep high school alum and University of Washington student living in Italy during her junior year abroad. Amanda Knox? Murder? She called up the memory of the bright student in her AP English class. It didn’t make sense. “I went back and read some of what had been reported,” Johnson says. In articles with headlines like “Student Murdered After Refusing to Take Part in Sex” and “The Twisted World of Foxy Knoxy,” the teacher learned that her star pupil had been arrested for the homicide of her roommate in the medieval Italian village of Perugia. Investigators speculated that the victim perished during a Knox-led orgy or satanic ritual.

“Amanda was a person who went out of the way to be kind to other people,” Johnson thought. “How in the world could this be the same person?”

The question would puzzle others affiliated with Seattle Prep—faculty, Knox’s fellow students, and their parents. The answer most of them came to, and what they decided to do with that answer, would put the school in the crosshairs of local and international scrutiny. The school held fundraisers for Knox’s legal defense fund and wrote letters on her behalf to President Obama. A King County judge—a parent of one of Knox’s classmates—put his job on the line to defend her. And an Italian prosecutor, 6,000 miles away, scratched his head at Seattle Prep’s audacity.

Why was this high school, so seemingly incongruous with what the world knew about Amanda Knox, sticking its neck out for her? The answer is as complex as the murder mystery itself.

SNIP

By the time she graduated from Prep in 2005—with a 3.9 grade point average—Knox was also known campuswide for being particularly kind and warmhearted. One of her close friends in the drama department was openly gay. In solidarity, Amanda helped him organize Seattle Prep’s first gay-straight alliance. Years later, her penchant for kindness and justice would come back around.

SNIP

[KamaAina]

1. How do you say Johnnie Cochran in Italian?

That's who she needs.

[bobclark86]

2. And all the old Buffalo Bills reporters say...

O.J. Simpson was a super-nice dude who was fun to work around.

Just for some perspective.

[pnwmom]

3. Just for some perspective -- OJ had previously assaulted his wife, which was documented with photos.

Last edited Wed Mar 25, 2015, 06:30 PM - Edit history (2)

And the whole country remembers OJ taking the police on a chase toward the border.

But Amanda didn't run. Instead, while the other friends of Meredith all left the country as quickly as possible, Amanda, in her innocence, stayed to try to help the police. She had an aunt in Germany who was urging her to leave, but she wanted to help.

Her goodness is what got her into so much trouble. She had no idea what a vulnerable position she was in, trusting the people around her to treat her with the same kindness she treated everyone else. And so she talked to the police without an attorney for more than four days, till she finally broke down during an overnight interrogation.

OJ was pretty much the opposite. He knew to protect himself from the get-go. First he tried to run and then he hired great attorneys, who made sure he wasn't criminally convicted, despite his previous documented assault on his wife.

And OJ began his trial with decades of accumulated goodwill from the public and the media. Amanda's first introduction to the larger world was as the "she-devil," the "Luciferina" who had sex with boys and had killed her roommate.

Their cases couldn't be more different.

[Scootaloo]

9. Knox also hasn't written a book titled "If I Did It"

[jberryhill]

4. Meh

There is nothing relevant to her case which anyone at that school has to offer.

Crimes are not about what kind of person someone is. They are about what people do.

I don't know, and frankly don't care, about the continuing Amanda Knox saga, but this sort of piece is entirely beside the point.

Ted Bundy had a winning personality too. Big deal. And some really shitty people have managed not to kill anyone.

[pnwmom]

6. The Italian prosecutor had no actual evidence, so he was the one who made it all about character.

Would you care if our justice system allowed a defendant to be convicted based on unchallengeable stipulations an unrelated defendant agreed to in a separate trial?

[jberryhill]

8. Your question is a non-sequitur

Nobody at a Seattle high school has anything in their knowledge or possession which either implicates or exonerates this woman in this crime.

"Would you care if our justice system allowed a defendant to be convicted based on unchallengeable stipulations an unrelated defendant agreed to in a separate trial?"

I would, but it doesn't, so I don't. None of which has anything to do with the absolute lack of relevance of this piece about the opinions of her among people she knew in high school.

[pnwmom]

10. She was convicted because so many people in Italy bought the idea that she was a "she-devil,"

not because there was any evidence. And the people in Seattle actually knew her, unlike those who were accusing her. So since her character was deemed relevant by the Italian authorities, and used to convict her, why don't the opinions of people who actually knew her matter?

[jberryhill]

11. "why don't the opinions of people who actually knew her matter?"

I had no idea the Seattle newspapers in 2015 were introduced as evidence in a trial held years ago.

How many of them showed up to testify?

The OP of this thread is a newspaper piece about how people at a high school in Seattle think someone is a nice person. There are, no doubt, millions of nice people in the greater Seattle area.

Whether someone is a nice person is pretty much irrelevant to the question of whether they committed some crime or another. The characterizations of her in the Italian press are equally irrelevant.

Okay, lots of people in Seattle think she's peachy. That and five bucks will get a cup of coffee and a conversation about race at Starbucks.

The trailer is out, the movie premieres in June. All participants in the Amanda Knox industry will get another moment in the sun.

She's not going to be extradited, so the practical relevance of carryings-on in Italy is about nil.

[pnwmom]

13. This article, which was written in 2010, before her 2011 acquittal, explains why people

Last edited Wed Mar 25, 2015, 06:39 PM - Edit history (1)

in Seattle support her, despite all the efforts of the hate-industry lined up against her. The horrible stabbing death of Meredith Kercher was carried out by a sociopath. Murders like this don't come out of nowhere. The murderer almost always has a history leading up to an act of horrific violence. In the case of Rudy Guede, he had a history of three recent burglaries where he was caught carrying a knife. The police have never explained why he was never arrested, even though he was caught redhanded.

You don't care. So noted. But many "experts" say that extradition is very likely. I hope you're right that it's not.

P.S. See all the trolls below who have had their hate-posts removed? They're still operating all over the Internet, and they're still determined to slur Amanda everywhere they can. They don't have any actual evidence, so they make do with character assassination.

[geek tragedy]

14. Hey, everyone who knew John David Stutts said they thought he killed Buckwheat, nt

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

12. Really was surprising to see how the other women left town

so quickly, but, then, being European, I suppose they knew the Italian "justice" system better than Amanda did. And Amanda's aunt in Germany knew, as well. Amanda did not take her advice to leave.

Woe to the naive, anywhere. U.S. included, of course.