THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHREYER HONORS COLLEGE DEPARTMENT OF SPANISH, ITALIAN AND PORTUGUESE IMPACT OF THE ITALIAN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE ON THE AMANDA KNOX TRIALS ANDREW J. MASCELLI SPRING 2013 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for baccalaureate degrees in Italian and International Politics with honors in Italian Reviewed and approved* by the following: Maria Truglio Associate Professor of Italian Thesis Supervisor and Honors Supervisor Johanna Rossi Wagner Lecturer in Italian Faculty Reader * Signatures are on file in the Schreyer Honors College. i ABSTRACT On the afternoon of November 2nd, 2007 the body of Meredith Kercher, a British exchange student, was found in her residence in the central-Italian city of Perugia. Kercher shared this residence with a young American woman by the name of Amanda Knox as well as two young Italian women. Within a matter of days, authorities had detained multiple suspects on the grounds that Meredith Kercher had been the victim of a murder. Among the alleged involved parties was Knox herself. What followed for Knox was a contentious and lengthy legal battle spanning some four years. Knox and her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito would remain in prison with little recourse other than to abide by the legal ramifications of their position. Knox in particular found herself in a dangerous, unfamiliar and frightening situation. Her eventual exoneration and release in the fall of 2011 was an event I personally witnessed alongside several hundred onlookers outside a nondescript Italian courthouse on a chilly fall evening in the quaint hill city of Perugia. Sentiments ranged from quiet vindication of a young girl’s innocence to vocal outrage at the liberation of an accessory to murder. The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyze the circumstances of Knox’s time as a suspect in the murder trial, with special regard to the impact of a foreign language on her ability to navigate and properly respond to the demands made of her as a defendant; whether it restricted her ability to act in her own best interests; and whether it impacted the course of the legal proceedings. This paper will demonstrate how language and culture barriers can drastically alter the way in which an event (i.e. a trial) is both conducted and viewed by the world at large. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................... iii Background .............................................................................................................................. iv Chapter 1 The Italian Criminal Justice System ........................................................................ 1 Reform ............................................................................................................................. 2 Court Structure ................................................................................................................. 3 The Investigation .............................................................................................................. 4 The Knox Trials ............................................................................................................... 7 The Appeal ....................................................................................................................... 9 Chapter 2 The Media ............................................................................................................... 11 American Media ....................................................................................................... 11 British Media ............................................................................................................ 12 Italian Media ............................................................................................................ 14 Chapter 3 The Language .......................................................................................................... 23 Culture Shapes Language ................................................................................................. 23 Body Language ................................................................................................................ 31 Chapter 4 Could It Happen Here? ............................................................................................ 35 Chapter 5 The Future ............................................................................................................... 40 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 45 Appendix A .............................................................................................................................. 46 Timeline of Events ........................................................................................................... 46 Appendix B .............................................................................................................................. 54 A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE .................................................................................... 54 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 56 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I’d like to extend my gratitude to both Doctor Maria Truglio and Doctor Johanna Wagner for their help in the research, writing and editing hours they set aside, without which this paper would be entirely impossible. I’d also like to extend my thanks to Professor Zach Nowak, who provided valuable information on Italian subjects and greatly enhanced the efficacy of this paper. iv Background Amanda Knox, a native of Seattle Washington, was a student at the University of Washington and 20 years old at the time of the murder. Her residence in Italy was the result of her decision to study Italian, German and creative writing at the Universita per Stranieri1 in downtown Perugia, Italy. The University was founded in 1921 as part of a Fascist effort to promote Italian culture, but in recent years the student body has distinguished itself for more scandalous reasons.2 Perugia itself is a small Italian city perched on a hill in the central Italian province of Umbria. During the course of her time in Perugia Knox became romantically involved with a young Italian engineering student by the name of Raffaele Sollecito. The events of Knox’s stay in the Italian penal system and the course of her trial begin on November 2nd, 2007 with the death of her roommate Meredith Kercher. The brutalized state of Kercher’s body: throat slashed and half-clothed, instantly indicated that she had been a victim of murder. Knox and her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were quickly detained by the Italian authorities on suspicion of involvement and on allegations that Knox had admitted to being at home at the time of Meredith’s murder. Questioning by authorities resulted in allegations by Knox that a local bar owner by the name of Patrick Lumumba had in fact been the one to commit the murder. After several weeks of questioning Lumumba was eventually released following the corroboration of his alibi. This false implication by Knox would cause Lumumba to bring a civil suit against her. Eventually Rudy Guede, a Libyan national, was extradited from Germany to Italy where DNA evidence confirmed that he had been sexually involved with Meredith Kercher on the day of the murder. Formal charges were not filed against the trio of Knox, Guede and Sollecito until July of 2008, marking a detainment of over 8 months. It would take another 5 months for the indictments and for the trials of Sollecito and Knox to begin. During this interim, Rudy Guede was indicted, tried, convicted and 1 It is interesting to note that the Italian word for “foreigner” and “stranger” are the same. 2 Burleigh, Nina. The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Trials of Amanda Knox, Broadway, 2011. p.45. Print. v completed an appeals process reducing his sentence from 30 years to 16. It would take until early December of 2009 for the initial trial of Knox and Raffaele Sollecito to conclude, with both defendants receiving guilty sentences on all counts. Knox herself was sentenced to 26 years in prison, while Sollecito received 25.3 Appeals were immediately filed by both parties. The appeals process would not move forward for nearly a year, with the trial resuming in November of 2010, at which time trial was postponed another month due to the absence of one of the attorneys. However, in June of 2010 Knox was charged with slander by Italian authorities for accusing them of physically abusing her for the purposes of intimidation. 4 Knox alleged that this abuse by interrogators caused her to falsely implicate Patrick Lumumba. In addition to the murder charges and libel suit brought by the police department, Knox was the object of a libel suit by Patrick Lumumba for falsely implicating him in the murder of Meredith Kercher, and a separate civil lawsuit on behalf of Meredith Kercher’s parents. All three trials were held in the same courtroom at the same time. The final nine months of Knox’s journey within the Italian penal system reflects the surrealism with which this case progressed. The evidentiary base on which the prosecution stood is slowly revealed to be inadequate, inconclusive and oftentimes inadmissible by third party DNA experts. The prosecution dismisses the experts’ submissions out of hand and continues