Recent Stories with tag amanda knox

The view from the deck at Ivar's on Lake Union

ABC News: Rudy Guede's cell mate claims Guede told him Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito weren't at the house when Meredith Kercher was killed--another man was. Guede says he never said that. Who do you trust, the convicted child killer or the convicted murderer? Once again, Andrea Vogt has all the details.

Here on The SunBreak, Jeremy has been covering Oregon's response to declining state revenues; now Washington Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown has unveiled her idea for a high earner's income tax referendum--letting the public vote on it in November. The initial reaction from the legislature is that they won't be rushed into anything--except of course deep cuts to basic services and health care for the working poor, and increases in the regressive sales tax that will hit the working poor hardest.

An income tax of 4.5 percent would be assessed on any income over $200,000 for an individual, $400,000 for a married couple. The state sales tax would drop to six cents. For instance, the Port of Seattle CEO makes $319,000. If he were single, he'd pay 4.5 percent of $119,000, or $5,355 in income taxes.

TechFlash reported on Google's acquisition of Picnik, the hometown photo editing service. Starbucks tried to defuse the uproar over its handgun-agnostic position. Tom Douglas can't wait to feed the Amazonian masses down in South Lake Union....

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Seattlepi.com's correspondent in Italy for the Amanda Knox trial(s), Andrea Vogt, has just filed a story on the 427-page ("front and back") judge's opinion, which sheds light on the jury's verdict. Vogt says Judge Giancarlo Massei's document "leaves ample room for a number of criticisms that will likely feature prominently in her upcoming appeal." For her defenders, that day can't come soon enough.

Though the jury came to the conclusion that Knox was involved in the murder, they "disagreed with the murder dynamic that prosecutors put forth," reports Vogt. They believed Guede started the sexual violence and that Knox aided in it to some degree. The forensic evidence against Knox was compelling for the jury.

ABC News says that Massei wrote that Knox "killed her roommate 'without any animosity or feeling of resentment,' and that the grisly homicide was the result of 'casual contingencies.'" That puts the judge in disagreement with the prosecution's theory that Amanda Knox murdered Meredith Kercher because of differing hygienic standards. For Massei, the best explanation is that things got out of hand.

Despite arriving at a substantially different accounting of events, the judge wrote that the prosecution "presents a comprehensive and coherent picture, without holes or inconsistencies."

Here is the tempest in a macchiato thus far: A new Capitol Hill pocket park, at the corner of East John Street and Summit Avenue East, was to be named Perugia Park. The Park Naming Committee suggested it to honor the sister city relationship between Seattle and Perugia. It seems they also meant to pour some honorific oil on the waters agitated by the Amanda Knox trial--they just didn't come right out and say it.

The tin-eared announcement was made by people trying to duck the symbolism they chose. Parks officials seemed to think they could safely decree what the park stood for--the sister city connection--and nothing else. The public backlash was immediate, and Parks Superintendent Tim Gallagher has tabled the naming process until the spring.

The Seattle Times op-ed page, no stranger itself to tin-eared decrees, has weighed in, declaring Perugia "not a bad place," but concluding that "[f]or now, the parks department should abandon the plan and find another more suitable name." (The Times' Nicole Brodeur also thinks Seattle Prep's Amanda Knox fundraiser is in poor taste because "it's likely making some people angry and uneasy." These people, for the record, seem to be residents of Brodeur's imagination--no one is quoted.)

It would be a mistake to confuse public upset with bad communication skills with real animosity toward Perugia. I can't imagine a huge outcry to the Parks Department announcing that the name, in recognition of the stress and strains of the Amanda Knox trial, commemorates our sister city. What people objected to was not a Perugian taint or the timing, but the murky motivation.

Name Perugia Park. Be clear about the reason--that especially now, Seattle and Perugia need this symbol of friendship and understanding. And challenge the vindictive and axe-grinding--and the few who stir the pot whenever they get the chance--to say otherwise in public.

Business news site Bloomberg is shouldering in for its piece of the Amanda Knox story: They say the Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini has denied suggestions that there are U.S.-Italy "tensions" as a result of the guilty verdict for Amanda Knox.

If anyone is remotely tense, it's likely the doing of U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, who released a statement just after the verdict, saying, "The prosecution did not present enough evidence for an impartial jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms. Knox was guilty." Further, "I will be conveying my concerns to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton."

On ABC's This Week, when asked about the case and Cantwell's concerns, Hillary Clinton said, "George, I honestly haven’t had time to even examine that. I have been immersed in what we’re doing in Afghanistan. Of course, I’ll meet with Senator Cantwell or anyone who has a concern, but I can’t offer any opinion about that at this time."

As of today, Frattini said, there have been no Italo-...

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Times like these, you need a snow break. Item 31181, Ben Evans Recreation Program Collection (Record Series 5801-02), Seattle Municipal Archives.

Maurice Clemmons was shot to death by a Seattle patrol officer in the early morning hours of December 1, but the epilogue of the alleged Lakewood cop killer has at least three chapters of its own: the complicity of Clemmons' family and the arrest of his sister, the fate of his aunt's ransacked, tear-gassed home (news of a fundraiser for the damages appeared in CDNews comments), and Washington-Arksansas parole politics.

Yesterday, former UW exchange student Amanda Knox was found guilty on all counts of the charges against her in the murder of Meredith Kercher. The trial in Perugia has been called a "public lynching," which is true in at least one way: No matter her guilt or innocence, Amanda Knox's earlier life--the one with the soccer, Seattle Prep diploma, and study-abroad semester--has officially ended. Plenty of unanswered questions remain.

In the good news column: Amtrak Cascades is getting Wi-Fi in March of 2010, making those hours of unexpected delays a bit more endurable. Michael Cera came to town (now he's visiting Alcatraz, says Twitter, so you can stop trying to spot him). GM Tim Ruskell and the Seahawks parted ways (obviously not good news for Mr. Ruskell, but some of you were lifting beers in celebration), but Mike Holmgren says his schedule is free. You can now subscribe to Cliff Mass's weather blog on your iPhone. (Cliff, I wanna subscribe to Probcast! Gimme!)

Last but now least, he put a ring on it! Seattlepi.com's Mónica Guzmán and Jason Preston got engaged. That's Jason of EatSleepPublish. Twitter is so happy! (This concludes my Larry King impression.)

That's the big news coming out of Perugia today. A psychologist, Carlo Caltagirone, testified that, "She would have said anything to reduce the tension and stress and make the people questioning her happy," after more than 40 hours of questioning over a three-day period. False confessions have long been a controversial staple of American justice, most notoriously in the Central Park Jogger case, where four teenagers confessed to the brutal assault (and implicated a fifth) under pressure in 1989, only to have their convictions tossed out in 2002 when forensic evidence proved a completely different man acted alone to commit the crime. Whatever the case, Caltagirone is apparently the final witness in the case, meaning that sooner or later we can probably put this entire affair behind us.