Convicted killer Amanda Knox is actually a loving young woman rather like the cartoon character Jessica Rabbit, a defence lawyer claimed today.
Just a day after another lawyer told her appeal hearing in Italy that Knox was a “a lying, sex-loving she-devil” Giulia Bongiorno said Knox, the American student found guilty of killing British room mate Meredith Kercher, was not a bad person.
He said she was not the “femme fatale” her accusers describe and compared her to Jessica Rabbit, saying she was faithful like the “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” character.
Knox was convicted of murdering Ms Kercher, a fellow student in Perugia, and sentenced to 26 years in prison, while co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years.
Mr Bongiorno, Sollecito’s lawyer, paraphrased a famous line from the movie saying Knox “is not bad, she’s just drawn that way.”
Knox and Sollecito deny killing Ms Kercher. A verdict in the appeals case is expected by next week.
By the media as well as in court, Knox has either been described either as a manipulative “she-devil” or as an innocent girl caught in a judicial inferno in a foreign land. Ms Bongiorno said she was really an immature girl who had just started dating Sollecito.
“One should not mistake tenderness for sexual obsession,” she said, adding the two liked making faces at each other.
“How do you reconcile that with the ‘Venus in Furs’ image?” — another reference Ms Bongiorno threw in to a literary character who enslaved her lover.
Knox and Sollecito insist they spent the night at his house the night of the murder, watching a film, smoking pot and having sex.
The movie they said they were watching, “Amelie,” led Ms Bongiorno in the original trial to compare Knox to the title character, an innocent girl intent on doing good.
Ms Bongiorno also looked at DNA evidence linking her client to the crime, most notably an alleged trace on the bra clasp of the victim.
Prosecutors maintain that Sollecito’s DNA was on the clasp of Ms Kercher’s bra as part of a mix of evidence that also included the victim’s genetic profile.
A court-ordered review of evidence, carried out by independent experts, said the attribution could not be certain and highlighted the risk of contamination on the clasp, which was collected from the crime scene 46 days after the murder.
The review significantly weakened the prosecution case, giving the defendants hope that they might be freed after four years behind bars.
AP