Waiting To Be Heard - A Memoir Part 49

"Raffaele and Rudy Guede never met, went out together, or saw each other," Maori said. "The two young men belonged to completely different worlds and cultures. Raffaele comes from a big and healthy family. Rudy rejected his family. Raffaele has always been a model student. Rudy was never interested in school or work. Raffaele is timid and reserved. Rudy is uninhibited, arrogant, extroverted."

"Accomplices who don't know each other ..." Bongiorno said, drawing out the words to emphasize the paradox that they couldn't have been accomplices if they didn't even know each other!

Raffaele, she told the court, was "Mr. n.o.body"-put in by the prosecution as an afterthought. "There was no evidence of him at the scene." The prosecution had contradicted themselves. "He's there, but he's not. He has a knife, but he doesn't. He's pa.s.sive, he's active."

In defending Raffaele, she also defended me. "If the court doesn't mind, and Amanda doesn't mind, the innocence of my client depends on Amanda Knox," she said. "A lot of people think that she doesn't make sense. But Amanda just sees things her way. She reacts differently. She's not a cla.s.sic Italian woman. She has a nave perspective of life, or did when the events occurred. But just because she acted differently from other people doesn't mean she killed someone... .

"Amanda looked at the world with the eyes of Amelie" she said, referring to the quirky waif in the movie that Raffaele and I watched the night of Meredith's murder.

Amelie and I had traits in common, Bongiorno said. "The extravagant, bizarre personality, full of imagination. If there's a personality who does cartwheels and who confesses something she imagined, it's her. I believe that what happened is easy to guess. Amanda, being a little bizarre and nave, when she went into the questura, was truly trying to help the police and she was told, 'Amanda, imagine. Help us, Amanda. Amanda, reconstruct it. Amanda, find the solution. Amanda, try.' She tried to do so, she tried to help, because she wanted to help the police, because Amanda is precisely the Amelie of Seattle."

Then, the moment that Luciano, Carlo, Maria Del Grosso (Carlo's second), and I had been waiting for. Just as they'd been promising me for more than two years, they went over the entire case-the witnesses, the forensics, the illogic of the prosecution's case-turning the clock back to the beginning and telling it from our perspective.

"At lunch hour on November 2, 2007, a body was discovered," Luciano began. "It was a disturbing fact that captured the hearts of everyone. Naturally there were those who investigated. Naturally there were testimonies. Naturally there was the initial investigative activity. Immediately, immediately, especially Amanda, but also Raffaele, were suspected, investigated, and heard for four days following the discovery of the body. There was demand for haste. There was demand for efficiency. There was demand.

"Such demand and such haste led to the wrongful arrest of Patrick Lumumba-a grave mistake."

Carlo picked up the thread. "There is a responsible party for this and it's not Amanda Knox. Lumumba's arrest was not executed by Amanda Knox. She gave information, false information. Now we know. But you couldn't give credit to what Amanda said in that way, in that moment and in that way. A general principle for operating under such circ.u.mstances is maximum caution. In that awkward situation there was instead the maximum haste."

Having heard what they wanted to hear and without checking further, the investigators and Prosecutor Mignini arrested Patrick-bringing him in "like a sack of potatoes," Luciano said.

I was relieved to hear someone telling the truth. Seeing my lawyers in this theatrical mode, I relaxed the tiniest bit.

Maria Del Grosso criticized Mignini for the fiction he'd invented. "What must be judged today is whether this girl committed murder by brutal means. To sustain this accusation you need very strong elements, and what element does the prosecution bring us? The flus.h.i.+ng of the toilet. Amanda was an adulterer. I hope that not even Prosecutor Mignini believes in the improbable, unrealistic, imaginary contrast of the two figures of Amanda and Meredith."

Yes. Make them stop pitting Meredith and me against each other! We were never like that in real life!

"In chambers you will have to apply the law, but remember: condemning two innocents will not restore justice to poor Meredith's memory, nor to her family. There's only one thing to do in this case: acquit."

During the reb.u.t.tals, on December 3, each lawyer was given a half hour to counter the closing arguments made over the past two weeks. Speaking for me, Maria criticized Mignini for portraying Meredith as a saint and me as a devil. In reality, she said, we lived similar lives. Meredith had casual s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps. So did I. Meredith wanted to study seriously and be responsible. So did I.

Mignini continued to insinuate that I had loose morals, going beyond the testimony to come up with his own examples. In an eleventh-hour swipe at my reputation, he said it was likely that I had met up with Rudy and made a date with him for the one hour Raffaele had planned to take his friend, Jovanna Popovic, to the bus station the night of November 1. I wanted to amuse myself with another boy-a "not unwelcome distraction."

"She was a little, let's say, very social, Amanda. Amanda was sick of the reproaches of Meredith, who also talked about needing to be faithful to one's own boyfriend, no doubt! Meredith was precisely of an uncommon level of uprightness."

Mignini knows neither Meredith nor me in the least.

"I've asked myself if we were listening to a prosecutor, a lawyer, or a moralist," Maria said, standing up for women everywhere. "Who are you to make such a claim in the name of a woman that it's so much like a woman to be at the throat of another woman?"

Then Raffaele and I made our final pleas. Raffaele talked about how he would never hurt anyone. That he had no reason to. That he wouldn't have done something just because I'd told him to.

I'd spent hours sitting on my bed making notes about what I wanted to say, but as soon as I stood up, every word emptied from my brain. I had to go with what came to me, on the few notes I had prepared.

"People have asked me this question: how are you able to remain calm? First of all, I'm not calm. I'm scared to lose myself. I'm scared to be defined as what I am not and by acts that don't belong to me. I'm afraid to have the mask of a murderer forced on my skin.

"I feel more connected to you, more vulnerable before you, but also trusting and sure in my conscience. For this I thank you ... I thank the prosecution because they are trying to do their job, even if they don't understand, even if they are not able to understand, because they are trying to bring justice to an act that tore a person from this world. So I thank them for what they do ... It is up to you now. So I thank you."

My words were so inadequate. But at least I remembered to thank the court again. Now I had to put my faith in what my lawyers and our experts and I had said month after month. I had to believe that it was good enough.

When I went back to prison that afternoon, I saw Don Saulo.

"I'm feeling hopeful," I said. "I think everything is going to work out well. Things have turned around. It's clear the evidence against me is unreliable. There are lots of people who support me. So why do I feel like I'm about to be executed?"

On the final morning, I was glad for the thirty-minute van trip from the prison to the downtown courthouse. It gave me something to do. And even though I'd be leaving prison as soon as the verdict was rendered, I was happy I could briefly be in the courtroom with my family before we had to wait out the verdict separately.

It took about a minute for Judge Ma.s.sei to declare the trial formally over. The time had come for the judges and jury to decide whom they believed. They exited single file through the door to chambers in the front of the courtroom. I stared at the door after it closed, wis.h.i.+ng I knew what was going on behind it.

Then the prison van took me back to Capanne. I felt completely helpless, pointlessly thinking about what I should have said in my plea.

Back in my cell, I paced, sat on my bed, paced, sat. I tried to talk with my cellmates, Fanta and Tanya, but I was unable to concentrate on anything they were saying.

They were prepping me on all the superst.i.tions I had to remember when I came back with the good verdict-break my toothbrush in half and throw it away outside the prison, with my hairbrush and the shoes I wore most often. This meant I wasn't coming back. "Just before you get in the car, remember to brush your right foot along the ground," Fanta said. "It means you're promising freedom to the next prisoner."

My head pounded as I shot from excitement to terror and back again-and again. My brain bounced between Please, please, please and Finally, finally, finally-THE END.

Besides my cellmates, Laura was the only person I could stand to see. She came during socialita and made chicken with mushrooms for dinner. I ate one bite.

I planned to give my pans, pots, and clothes to Fanta and Tanya.

I told Laura, "I want you to have my bedsheets."

"That will be great, Amanda," she said, "but don't promise me anything until we know what's going to happen."

"I'm going to write you, Laura," I told her.

"I hope so," she said. "But let's just wait and see."

After dinner Tanya turned on the TV. Every channel was talking about my case: The big day! The world is hanging on, waiting to see what the decision will be in the "Italian trial of the century." Raffaele and Amanda have been charged with six counts. Meredith's family will be there to hear the verdict. Amanda's family is waiting in the hotel. The Americans believe there's no case, but the prosecution insists that Meredith's DNA is on the murder weapon and Raffaele's DNA is on Meredith's bra clasp. The prosecution has condemned the American media for taking an incorrect view of the case.

The people on TV dramatized it: the lives of two individuals-will they walk free or spend the rest of their lives in prison? And on another channel: It's a question of whether Amanda goes free or gets ergastalo-"life imprisonment."

Tanya gasped. "What do they mean?" she asked.

Manuela Comodi, the co-prosecutor, had called for a life sentence, but it was as if I didn't understand how that related to me. I said, "Yeah, they asked for life."

"They're going to try to do that?" Far more than I, Tanya realized what was at stake. She was fidgeting.

In Italy, a life sentence means no parole. The next-lowest option, thirty years, offers the possibility of parole after twenty years.

"It's going to be okay!" I said. "Just calm down!"

A life sentence couldn't happen. I have to be acquitted!

The guards stopped by from time to time to see how I was doing.

I kept going back and forth from my bed to my locker to do an inventory of my things. Were the books, clothes, and papers I wanted to take out with me ready? Were all my letters organized in a folder?