Michael Heavey says that he and others who believe in the innocence of Amanda Knox have reason for hope.
The Italian judge who’s been assigned to hear the appeal of her murder conviction last September is a man of integrity, Heavey said. And one of the first steps he took, Heavey noted, was to assign two experts in DNA analysis to review the infinitesimal bits of DNA found on a knife and bra clasp — critical (and questionable) pieces of evidence in a case that lacked a motive, an eye witness or anything else that could have otherwise pinned a murder on Knox and her ex-boyfriend.
As her father Curt Knox said during a visit to Vashon last week, “Things are moving in her direction.”
This is good news here on Vashon, where Amanda Knox, now 23 and serving a 26-year prison term in Italy, holds an important place. Her father was a star athlete who graduated from Vashon High School. And her grandparents are quiet, beloved Islanders — salt-of-the-earth people who steadfastly believe in their granddaughter’s innocence even as they have steadfastly avoided the glaring limelight this salacious case has placed her extended Seattle-based family under.
It’s impossible to know what happened on that November 2007 night when Knox’s roommate was murdered and sexually assaulted. But nothing in Knox’s life up to that point suggests she had it in her to murder anyone, least of all her friend and roommate. And none of the evidence points to her, save for a self-incriminating statement Italian authorities extracted from her after a 40-hour interrogation during which authorities lied to her about what her boyfriend — under interrogation in another room — was saying. And even that statement is full of holes, suggesting she signed it under duress and in a state of mind-altering exhaustion, Heavey said.
As Heavey, a King County Superior Court judge with his own impeccable record for integrity, said when he visited Vashon on Friday, her murder conviction “defies logic.”
Around the world, innocent people sit in jails for crimes they didn’t commit. It happens even in this country, of course, where poverty and an inadequately funded legal defense program have cost many, especially people of color, fair trials.
But the fact that it happens here and elsewhere and to people without the resources or support of this one young woman is no reason to ignore this miscarriage of justice in Italy.
Amanda Knox is one of our own. She has roots here on Vashon. What’s more, she wasn’t simply an unlucky young woman who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s ample evidence to suggest she was the target of what Heavey calls a modern-day witch trial — a case perpetrated by a conservative prosecutor who sees young, sexually liberated women as agents of the devil.
“The injustice shouts so loud we must speak out against it,” Heavey told the Vashon Rotary last week.
And so should we on Vashon. How can we help? We can donate airline miles to the family, donate money or write letters of support. Several websites have been set up. The best for those who want to help is the Amanda Knox Defense Fund, found at www.amandadefensefund.org.
And those who want to learn more can watch CNN’s one-hour, investigative documentary that aired last week and which “casts doubts upon controversial blood, knife, DNA and other evidence,” according to the news organization.
It’s time for Amanda Knox to come home.
