Amanda Knox spent four years in prison for the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher before being exonerated in March 2015.
In 2016 Knox appeared in a Netflix documentary which bore her name, describing the events leading up to and following Kercher’s death in Italy in November 2007. She recalls being painted as a promiscuous young American, despite her relative inexperience, who callously killed her British roommate in a sexual escapade gone wrong.
Now, Knox has spoken about the early release of Kercher’s convicted killer, Rudy Guede, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2008. That sentence was reduced to 16 years on appeal with Guede being granted partial release in 2017.
The 33-year-old will now continue his community service until his term ends in March 2022, while living in an apartment in Viterbo in Central Italy.
For Knox, who wrote about Guede’s release in an essay published on Medium, it is not the convicted killer’s release that troubles her so much as his continued lack of accountability for his alleged crimes.
Writes Knox, “It has been my fate to bear the infamy of Meredith Kercher’s tragic death, an infamy that belongs to her forgotten killer: Rudy Guede.”
She continues, “Taking his cue from the prosecution and media, Guede has taken every opportunity to blame and accuse me. And he has never acknowledged his horrific crime, or faced appropriate consequences.”
Knox, who is now an advocate for criminal justice reform – an issue that gained a global spotlight during 2020’s Black Lives Matter protest – explains that many people have asked her what punishment she believes should have been handed down to Guede.
She writes, “I think of my fellow exonerees. They are disproportionately men of color, like Guede. My friend Juan Rivera was sentenced to life in prison for a rape and murder he didn’t commit. He served 20 years before his exoneration. My friend Khalil Rushdan was sentenced to life in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. He served 15 years before he was exonerated. The average sentence for a wrongful conviction in the U.S. is 14 years, longer than Guede has spent in prison for actually raping and killing someone. Should he have gotten a life sentence? I don’t think so.”
Despite her exoneration, there are still people to this day who believe that Knox absolutely had a hand in her roommate’s death, because she didn’t “act the part” in the wake of the tragic crime.
Knox was deemed to be cold and to have behaved inappropriately after being seen kissing her boyfriend and later co-defendant, Raffaele Sollecito, outside the crime scene. The media perpetuated the image of Knox as a sexual deviant, with many Italian and British outlets calling her “Foxy Knoxy” in their coverage of the case.
According to Brian McGinn who was one of the filmmakers behind the Netflix documentary, Knox was unfairly judged because she is female.
“People have such an ingrained idea of how women should behave,” McGinn said in 2016. “And every culture all over the world has a different idea of what that is. So what we found is this is one example of this way that patriarchal societies all decide how women should behave and judge people.”