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By Root 211 0

Senator Maria Cantwell threatened diplomatic action. (Never mind that the U.S. Embassy in Rome, as well as international human rights groups, had decided early on that the case was legitimate and did not merit extraordinary intervention, although the embassy did send observers to the trial.) Donald Trump and hundreds of other people with comments on the New York Times Web site vowed to boycott Italy. Naturally, Italians found this all deeply insulting. It took several days before the outcry quit drowning out the more reasonable voices observing that, given the evidence in the case, Amanda would probably have been convicted in an American court as well. That was followed by Amanda’s own comment after the verdict, to a member of Italian parliament touring the prison: “Yes, the system was fair to me.” (The family tried to deny she’d said it.)

The Knox clan hung around for a few days after the verdict, and the networks continued their courtship, all for the ultimate get—a prison interview with Amanda. But eight days after the verdict, two wire service reporters sneaked into the prison under the flag of a joint Italian-American foundation and got the exclusive first tidbit.

“I’m scared,” Amanda told Patricia Thomas of the Associated Press. “I don’t know what is going on.” It wasn’t the interview that everyone wanted. Thomas was not even able to ask about the trial; still, it lessened the value of those first jailhouse words. Marriott and the family have hinted that they will not give anyone an interview until the appeal process begins—in effect dangling the carrot to keep the networks interested and their coverage positive.

The family had been optimistic that Amanda would be acquitted and even bought a plane ticket for her to come home. Edda had planned a spa day for her back in Seattle, and Marriott was already brokering book and movie deals. Instead, Edda stayed until Christmas Eve. On her first attempt to visit Amanda after the verdict, the mother was denied access to Capanne prison. Now that Amanda was a convicted murderer, the rules changed and the visits were limited to just six a month.

10

“You Try to Be Persuasive but Not Insulting”

FOR THE THIRD YEAR in a row, Amanda Knox had the lead part in the Christmas play at Capanne prison outside Perugia. She played the blue-eyed Virgin Mary in a solemn religious pageant performed under the direction of the prison chaplain. But her long-running role on the international stage has ended, for now. Since December 5, when she was convicted of murdering Meredith Kercher, Amanda has lost the distraction of her weekly outings to court, each one a star turn before a ravenous media. Now, she is just another inmate, moved to the felony wing of the prison. Her previous cell mates—a Roma gypsy, a Chinese immigrant, and a woman from Kosovo who was on trial for killing her boyfriend—have been replaced by a fifty-three-year-old American drug pusher from New Orleans serving a four-year sentence. Amanda’s next hope for an outing is when her appeal is heard, most likely in the fall of 2010.

Amanda is fighting the demons that come with incarceration—depression, anxiety, paranoia, and hopelessness. Her hair is falling out under the stress. She is haunted by insomnia. Her dreams keep her awake. Her family will not authorize a jailhouse interview because of her fragile psychological state. Her family has been fairly successful at controlling how Amanda is portrayed, at least in U.S. media, but they have never been able to control how she presents herself. Amanda never quite fit the family’s script of a naive honor student, and now she has been in prison for more than two years, learning to negotiate the tricky politics of life in a population of murderers, drug addicts, and thieves. Gone is the whimsical girl who felt confident enough to perform cartwheels in a police station. She is taking correspondence courses at the University of Washington to finish her degree, but she has no access to e-mail, so she has to rely on the Italian postal system to turn in her schoolwork. An avid linguist