I’m not an Amanda Knox watcher.  Although I did read the first lurid account of the murder (sex orgies, drugs, good girl gone bad while abroad in Italy, etc.), I haven’t followed it since.

But yesterday I happened across the Rolling Stone article on her appeal.  Juicy, juicy, juicy. And alluring and sad.  We don’t know what the hell went on in that flat that night in 2007, but by any measure there’s more wrong with the prosecution’s case than is right. What’s more cogent a story: naive well-mannered girl from Seattle wrongly implicated in her roommate’s murder, or that once out from under her parent’s wing she fell under satanic influence and partook in drug fueled orgies?

All other friends of the murdered girl lawyered up and left the country.  Knox blithely stayed to answer questions.  She became the object of a muddled interrogation.  She signed a typed confession in Italian (which she could barely understand).  No evidence linked her to the scene of the crime.  A convicted perpetrator has confessed to the murder and stated that she wasn’t present.  Accusations of satanic ritual have come from a prosecutor who has charged defendants in three other cases with having performed satanic acts.

And then you have the tabloid industry that has fed tirelessly on the girl (and sold tons of pulp as a result).  And the British sport of maligning Knox speaks more of a general anti-americanism and displaced anger at our role at sinking the global economy.  Woe to Knox for deciding to go abroad just when the market began to crash.  We in the world want blood and, in the last few years it seems, we’ve been dining on hers.

If only Arthur Miller were alive today.

As I read the article though, I thought too of my own daughter, and even myself at 19- at my proclivity to sing out loud or at times be inappropriate – and how easy it is for someone young to the world to wander into a situation that is far out of their league.

And this thing we call justice is less about truth, and more about martial campaigns to twist the sentiments and perceptions of a jury or judge and spin a narrative that will inflame the imagination.

Knox’s family is on appeal.  They’ve hired a new legal team.  And also a media manager.  Coverage in support of her is ramping up.  God help them.