The Italian Supreme Court has ended the mad witchhunt that resulted in the conviction of looney Amanda Knox for murder that bewitched Italy like the hysteria of the Salem Witch trials. Like the Salem Witch trials, a lunatic prosecutor argued that Knox and Sollecito engaged in a satanic ritual involving an orgy or sacrifice.
The lunatic prosecutor has made similar accusations in the past. After American author Douglas Preston and Italian reporter Mario Spezi criticized him for blaming that unsolved series of murders on a shadowy group of devil worshippers, the prosecutor responded by accusing them of being part of this Satanic conspiracy. Spezi was imprisoned on suspicion of murder and Preston was driven out of Italy after being threatened with prosecution.
Unfortunately these kinds of accusations often are accepted at face value. The moral outrage at the idea of such crimes (hey United States, I'm looking at you) is so overwhelming that things like lack of evidence and the sheer absurdities of the claims being made never sink in. Similarly, the idea that Knox and Sollecito were perverts capable of murder was leaked by the police to the press and took on a life of its own.
It was a close call apparently, as it took over eight hours. The media "experts" all thought Amanda was going to be burned at the stake. Remember this was the same highest court that overturned the conviction of a 60-year-old man for having sex with an 11-year-old girl, because the verdict failed to take into account their "amorous relationship"Pietro Lamberti, a social services worker in Catanzaro in southern Italy, was convicted in February 2011 and sentenced to five years in prison for sexual acts with a minor. The verdict was later upheld by an appeals court. But Italy's supreme court ruled that the verdict did not sufficiently consider "the 'consensus', the existence of an amorous relationship, the absence of physical force, the girl's feelings of love". The court's October 15th decision to order a retrial was made public this month by Il Quotidiano della Calabria and slowly spread to social media networks, where it sparked heated reactions against the Italian justice system.
Italian justice. When it comes to justice in Italy, the devil is in the details.
When are they going to burn the lunatic prosecutor?