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By Root 231 0

who came to Europe to study German and Italian, she is now teaching herself Chinese and Russian. She gets an hour of outdoor recreation each day. She can visit the prison beauty salon once a week. She is on the waiting list to work in the laundry. The money she makes there can be spent on treats such as writing paper, candy bars, and cigarettes, which she can trade for even better stuff like music CDs and smuggled drugs. She gets just six visits a month from family members, who can bring her certain items of food and clothing.

Amanda is still very much her own person, not inclined to give much thought to the consequences of her actions. She writes uncensored letters from prison to whomever she wants. She speaks freely to anyone who walks past her cell. Prison administrators see a certain value in letting visitors swing by her cell block to get a look at Capanne’s biggest celebrity, and the family has no control over that. In the days after the verdict, a local Umbrian lawmaker visited Capanne and just happened upon Amanda’s cell. Later, he reported that she told him that she still had faith in the Italian judicial system and that her trial was “correct.” Amanda’s family quickly shot down those comments as “misconstrued.” After all, how could they justify the media maelstrom in America if Amanda actually believed she got a fair trial in Italy?

Amanda’s family is increasingly desperate both to keep the story alive and to keep it under their control. But putting her on camera is risky. If Amanda were to appear mentally unstable or repeat some of her early recollections of being in the house when Meredith was murdered, it would hurt her already fragile public image. And to compound the potential problems, both Amanda and her parents have now been sued for defamation for claiming that the Perugia police brutalized her during their interrogation. In an interview they gave to John Follain of the Sunday Times of London, Curt and Edda repeated Amanda’s claims that she had been given no food or water for nine hours and threatened and beaten by the police. They were served papers at lawyer Luciano Ghirga’s office when they arrived in Perugia on November 27, 2009, for closing arguments in their daughter’s case. Amanda’s lawyers never lodged an official complaint for the alleged police brutality, even though Edda told me last summer that they promised her they would do it right after the verdict, no matter how that went. But the lawyers let it go, so the police saw a chance to clear their name. In January 2010, Amanda was served notice in her prison cell. She, too, is being charged for testifying that police hit her on the back of the head twice. After months of hostile publicity, the Perugian authorities are sensitive to criticism. But the family is wary, too; it would be extremely risky right now to have Amanda pressed by a tough investigative journalist looking for ratings.

AMANDA’S FAMILY HAS mortgaged both the Knox and the Mellas family homes and borrowed against their pensions. They have held frequent fund-raisers and accepted donations of both cash and frequent-flyer points on the Amanda Defense Fund Web site (www.amandadefensefund.org). Curt, who lost his job at Macy’s last summer, has not yet found new work. On top of legal fees, Amanda’s family has the added burden of international travel. Edda has hinted that she would move to Perugia if she could find reasonable employment as a teacher or translator. For now, Curt, Edda, Chris, and Edda’s brother still come in shifts. But if Amanda loses her appeals, it seems unlikely they will be able to sustain this schedule for years and years.

Raffaele Sollecito’s parents are extremely wealthy, so they have not been substantially harmed by the costs of his defense. But they believe, passionately, that their son suffered from being tried together with Knox, and they may move to sever the two cases on appeal. Raffaele’s lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno, admitted that she started working on the appeal on the trip back to Rome the night of the verdict. The risk she took to mount a joint defense