So after 4 years of legal wranglings and the such like, Amanda Knox and her ex-boyfriend have been released. I must point out she has been cleared of murder, but has been found guilty of slander which carries a 3 year penalty. Yet she has been released back to the US. The Kercher family have all the wounds reopened, and they have no closure as to why their young daughter was murdered. In all the palaver over her release, over all the tub thumping, and triumphalism of Knoxy’s supporters, there is still a bereaved family who have lost their little girl. It is heart breaking.

I wonder why certain cases become so high profile, and others not. People are murdered every day, but I suppose the press love a femme fatale. It is like we are still obsessed with this idea of a female sexual predator, a murderess of cunning and guile from 30s film noir. That she was considered attractive (she christened herself Foxy Knoxy) and took drugs made her all the more a suitable fall guy in this trial. I mean, surely this is the reason why Matthew Wright asked the question: Foxy Knoxy – Would ya? Would you boff a potential murderess? I am seriously, surely in their editorial meeting someone thought, that seems a tad inappropriate doesn’t it?

However, regardless of all this, everyone, even the most obviously guilty, deserve a fair trial. Knox was not given a fair trial. The press prevented this. Yes, there are some things that seem suspicious about her, or parts of her story that indicate that while she may not have murdered the girl, she was aware of the situation and may have helped to conceal something. The Italian courts failed to provide adequate evidence. Only they did. They had 400 pages of evidence that proved that Amanda Knox and her boyfriend were involved in some manner with the murder, but when 300 odd news camera trucks from the US and around the world suddenly materialized outside a small Perugia court, it stopped becoming about justice. All of a sudden the previously checked and verified DNA evidence was now ‘contaminated’. I feel for those forensic investigators who are being made out to be bumbling fools, when it feels there are political machinations afoot.

A columnist from Seattle interviewed on Radio 4 said, with no sense of irony, that Knox's parents had been through the "worst nightmare imaginable," by sending their daughter abroad and losing her for four years. Surely the actual worst nightmare was that experienced by the Kerchers who sent their daughter abroad and never got her back and never will.

Over the next umpteen months, Amanda Knox will have ample opportunity (and be given a lot of money) to tell her side of the story and I'm sure that every syllable of everything she says will be poured over by commentators looking for flaws and inconsistencies. So in media terms, this story is going to run and run. I wouldn't be surprised if she is being coached as we speak to drill into her the story. 

If I were Amanda Knox, I would go home, change my name, disappear into anonymity and thank my lucky stars I was convicted of murder in a country which didn’t have the death penalty! If Knox is as innocent as she professes, she would refuse to profit from the death of her murdered "friend". I am sure there will be people talking about her ‘4 years of hell’ and how she deserves compensation for that. I don't know, I struggle to agree with that, it seems any profiting from this situation seems in bad taste. 

It really has been a sorry mess this whole thing.  

- Anand