Money Talks, Killers Walk...

Last week on Oct. 3rd, Amanda Knox was set free by the Italian court. Knox, or "Foxy Knoxy" as the media had come to call her, had served 4 years in prison convicted of murdering her roommate, Meredith Kercher. In 2007 the Italian government arrested Knox, her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, & an associate of theirs, Rudy Guede. Though Knox and Sollecito were cleared of all charges against them after a court of appeals found problems with the evidence and investigation, Guede remained in prison - owning the blame of being the sole person responsible for taking Kercher's life.

Why is this a problem? Why is this so frustrating to me?

The day after Knox was freed & home in America, I was at chatting with a co-worker about the trial. My co-worker only knew of the trial from the Lifetime movie on Knox, I on the other hand followed the trial on every major news network I could. A customer overheard our conversation and decided to chip in his 2cents. His opinion?

"The Black kid did it. I believe he drugged Amanda Knox and had her kill that girl. I mean none of us really know, but why would she kill that girl?... It's obvious there's some foul play. And who's the obvious person behind that, you know what I'm saying?"

The Black Kid? The obvious person behind foul play and murder? I stood speechless, I felt myself tense up & it took all I had in me not to give this guy a piece of my mind.

Amanda Knox is a upper middle-class American White female from America. She was studying at the College for Foreigners in Italy. Rudy Guede is a Nigerian immigrant, who has a history of being a petty drug dealer & came from extreme childhood hardships. There's much less sympathy for Guede as he's still sitting in jail, serving 16 years for being an accomplice to murder - and now he's being held 100% responsible for murdering Meredith Kercher, when both Knox and her boyfriend were present at the scene of the crime. Supposedly the 4 of them were playing a sexual game that got "out of control too quickly for anyone to truly explain what happened that night".

There is quite a deal of favoritism towards Knox and Sollecito. There's this shade thrown onto Guede because of what we're not entirely sure. The color of his skin is not the only factor, albeit an important one, but even deeper is the relation of class in regards to personal responsibility for our actions. Could it be that it's more acceptable to jail someone from a lower class because their accessibility to legal help and publicity is highly improbable? Guede doesn't have the same benefits as Amanda Knox. He cannot afford a major law team to represent him in court. He doesn't have hundreds of people in 2 first world countries supporting him and pleading his innocence. His case is is not the same as front-page news Knox, a middle class white female, an American in all senses of the word. To many, even a customer at a retail store, Guede looks like the "obvious" killer.

Not to say that the Italian government is discriminatory, but the facts are the facts. The good looking, pretty, well-off, female American student is home in Seattle and the Black man is still in his cell, paying a debt to society because the cost of freedom was more than he could afford.