The Italian Court of Cassation, equivalent to America's Supreme Court, announced it's decision on Friday. The decision reverses a lower court decision and finds Amanda Knox and her former partner, Raffaele Sollecito, not guilty of the murder of her roommate in 2007. This is the end of an interminable legal process that included a 4 year prison stay for the young American college student who came to Italy to study almost 8 years ago. The decision underscores the weakness of a legal system that defies reason and defies changes and defies any attempts to alter the system in any meaningful way.
The case did not alter the conviction of the actual killer, the Ivory Coast native, Rudy Guede, who has been in prison since 2009. He will be eligible for parole in less than 10 years. His conviction for the same crime and his sentence of half the time given to Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito underscore the weakness in a system that calls for a complete overhaul. Justice in Italy is hardly guaranteed under the current system. Apparently, the lawyers in Italy maintain tight control over a system that guarantees not justice, but endless delays that extend cases beyond reasonable time limits as though that alone signifies justice has been done. A case in point is the high profile figure of Silvio Berlesconi. Despite convictions and endless appeals, he is rarely free of continued accusations based on alleged past misdeeds. In Ms. Knox' case, a prosecutor from Perugia, Giuliano Magnini, a convicted criminal for legal misdeeds in his role as public prosecutor, was allowed to assume the role in Ms. Knox case despite his role as defendant at the same time.
Here is the dark underside of Italy, rarely seen or considered by Americans and other visitors to the land of the Caesars, land of "La Dolce Vita". Will change come as a result of this decision? Don't hold your breath.
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