Where's The Justice Nowadays?

In the USA, if you get a sentence for murder, it invariably means whole of life or something quite close e.g. a time period without chance of parole ...

Only One Of These Men Will Stay Behind Bars .....

 .... but if you get a double sentence, it always means all of life, as they serve sentences consecutively, and not, as seems to be the case in the UK, concurrently. 

Legal Weasels And Foxy Justice

Once again the spinning wheel that is 'justice' in the western world has stopped and Amanda Knox (aka Foxy Knox) and her Italian ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito,  have been reinstated as guilty of the murder of Meredith Kercher, and both face long sentences .... But therein lies the rub, do they?

Old Foxy fled to the USA as soon as the first appeal set her 'free', and has since refused to return to Italy ... Her unspoken defence to the great unwashed of middle America seems to be that Europe, and Italy are backward countries, where a white American girl will get no justice (meaning she risks being found guilty, and being imprisoned), although what 'human rights' and sympathy a twice convicted murderess deserves is a little hard to see from this side of the Atlantic and all utter bollocks of course, she should try being a foreigner in the US legal system. Knox can fight any extradition in a US court, citing among other things international human rights law, possibly playing the double jeopardy card (the US still prevents criminals being tried for the same crime twice), a practise that has been largely abandoned in Europe as it let too many wriggle free when new evidence emerged, especially DNA ....

Of course the US, while quick to demand the extradition of foreign nationals from other countries, is notoriously reluctant to return the same service to other countries demanding US citizens so she has a good chance of getting away with this ...... 

In The US She Is The Classic Innocent Abroad

But while this white middle class legal merry go round has been swirling through the Italian court's and world media, there has been one person in prison for the murder of Ms Kercher, and that of course is the black man Rudy Guede from the Ivory Coast, who has already been convicted of Miss Kercher's murder at the first trial, and sentenced to 16 years in prison. As that verdict specified that he did not commit the crime alone and he either hasn't or had been refused the round of appeals the two white suspects have, maybe they could ask him what really happened that night?

In Italy Her Image Is Much Darker

Of course the backdrop to all this is the whole Western legal process, which allows for a seemingly endless round of appeals ... I mean what are the point of the first or even second trials, when the results can apparently be ignored, in favour of a third trial or even a fourth? - Yes apparently, Knox and Sollecito can appeal for a fourth time. I fail to see how justice can be served, if the verdicts of 12 good men and true, and another 12, and another .... Well you get the idea, can be simply overturned by legal process time after time .... The only people this ultimately serves well are the lawyers.

But maybe I am jumping the gun here, because of course Knox is still in the US and has vowed to fight against any return to Italy to face justice …... and on that note, Italian police have also reportedly found Mr Sollecito very near the Austrian border, after he had left the courtroom just before the verdict was read out ... but after his passport was then taken away, his lawyers said he had never intended to flee .... yep! 

Still one has to wonder if the US interest would have been the same if Foxy Knoxy had been Foxy Brown and black .....

Foxy Knoxy Court Verdicts

A story that has generated much coverage in the UK and elsewhere, is that of the murder of Meredith Kercher, and the guilty verdicts handed down by the Italian courts to Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, who each face over 25 yrs imprisonment.

No doubt there will be much coverage of this story, so my interest is not in the case itself, but rather in the US reaction to a justice system that isn't theirs. I have even heard an American suggest that Americans could only get justice in the US.

All very sad, especially when if you look at the facts, the US often treats foreigners harsher than locals (including demanding that a UK hacker who has aspergers syndrome be transported to the US, to face up to 60 yrs ... yes 60 yrs i.e. 3 times the sentence that the Italian's have handed out to a US murderess), or demanding that people who have committed no crime in their homeland be deported to, or arrested in, the US to face 'justice'. e.g. We allow gambling web sites in the UK, but the US has had the CEO's of these legal sites be arrested.

I accept that in many countries there are causes for concern over the 'state run' legal systems, but Italy is not some third world dictatorship (well apart from the Mafia), and is even in the slow process of trying to prosecute its erratic leader Berlusconi (who is trying once again to change the law to avoid this) - his latest scam is to change the statute limits on some crimes to just 2 yrs, which oddly enough stops anyone prosecuting him ...... shockingly this also implies that he has something to hide from a period as recent as 2 yrs ago!

Anyway, my point is that for the US commentators to suggest that Ms Knox and her well connected Italian boyfriend didn't get a 'fair trial' or 'justice', is plainly ignorant or purely arrogant, but in either case inexcusable. The Italian system has the same flaws and check guards as any other (including the US - remember OJ Simpson?) and the various appeals will no doubt be exhausted.

Update: 03/10/2011 - If ever proof was needed that courts work outside of the US, then the fact that the Italian appeal process has just found her and her boyfriend not guilty (because of doubts over the forensic evidence), is it. That is a controversial decision according to many, in the US as well as Italy (the black  boy takes the rap, as one Italian commentator said), but evidence enough that Italian courts are not third world, and it will now be interesting to see if Ms Knox will flee to the US, and then refuse to come back if the Italian prosecutors appeal against the verdict?

My guess that is that she will refuse to return, and then the question of her guilt will be forever in the same storyline as the OJ Simpson verdict. She will also become a millionairess from the TV / Media and Movie deals she makes.


Where's The Justice For Meredith?  

Sadly the true victims of all this will be Meredith Kercher, who lies in a cold grave, with only her family to grieve over her, and 'Justice', which seems to have failed her and her family.

Who in the US cries over the injustice for her?

PPS: A straw poll at work (where this was the first topic discussed after the news broke), suggests that 4 out 5 people (and it was only 5 people asked), thought that Knox had a hand in the murder. Now that might be UK bias, but these aren't 'anti-american' lefties, so is possibly indicitive of the general feelings in the UK.