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Rogue Prosecutor Targets Knox

'Railroad job' of a case lacks clear-cut evidence, motive

By Matt Cantor, Newser Staff

Posted Jun 11, 2009 8:27 AM CDT

(Newser) – With “flawed and flimsy” evidence and “no motive,” the murder trial of Amanda Knox seems more about a prosecutor’s ambitions than any likelihood the American student actually killed her housemate, Timothy Egan writes in the New York Times. “Any fair-minded jury would have thrown” the case “out months ago,” Egan says, citing an expert who called it “the railroad job from hell.”

“No reliable witness or credible evidence has ever placed” Knox and her then-boyfriend “at the crime scene,” Egan notes, but they’ve been “painted across Europe as thrill-seekers who killed a woman in a drug-fueled orgy.” Meanwhile, prosecutor Giuliano Mignini is facing a judge’s accusations that he intimidated and wiretapped “perceived enemies.” The case may well be continuing because his reputation hangs in the balance—no small thing in Italy.

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US murder suspect Amanda Knox looks on during a hearing in the Meredith Kercher murder trial, in Perugia, Italy, Friday May 29, 2009. (AP Photo/Stefano Medici)

US murder suspect Amanda Knox, foreground, is escorted by penitentiary police officers as she arrives for a hearing in the Meredith Kercher murder trial, in Perugia, Italy, Friday June 5, 2009. (AP Photo/Stefano Medici)

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The case against Knox has so many holes in it, and is so tied to the career of a powerful Italian prosecutor who is under indictment for professional misconduct, that any fair-minded jury would have thrown it out. - Timothy Egan

In every murder, the killer always leaves something behind and always takes something with him. All the forensic evidence points to Rudy Guede. - Anne Bremner, attorney

In Italy, the general assumption is that someone is guilty until proven innocent. Trials—in the press and in the courts—are more often about defending personal honor than establishing facts, which are easily manipulated. - Rachel Donadio, New York Times

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Rogue Prosecutor Targets Knox