Eyes of the World on Amanda Knox Verdict

The media is like the collective eyeball of the world. It wasn't looking when Amanda Knox was convicted of murder and sentenced to 26 years in prison, along with boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, who received a 26 year sentence.

More of the American media began taking notice during the appeal process when independent forensic experts testified that DNA obtained from Meredith Kercher's bra clasp and from a knife at Raffaele Sollecito's was compromised and possibly contaminated.

Meredith Kercher was studying in Perugia, Italy when she was found dead and with her throat slit on the bedroom floor of an apartment she shared with Knox and two young Italian women.

Earlier today, Knox finished her simple and moving appeal to the court. Dressed in a plain, shapeless frock, the "sex-loving she-devil" who took part in "satanic rituals" looked like a bedraggled peasant girl in an old Fellini movie as she pleaded with jurors to free her.

It seemed at times that no Americans were safe from innuendo as ABC News reported one prosecutor had described Knox's family as being akin to Nazi propagandists.

It may be fair to say that, if Knox was the killer, she was a fast mover. She had only been in Perugia since the beginning of October 2007.

It was only weeks later that Meredith Kercher was found dead in her locked bedroom. To believe the prosecutor's narrative, one has to accept that Knox teamed up with her boyfriend of only eight days and an unknown street person, Rudy Guede, to engage in group-sex-murder.

It may also be fair to say that Giuliano Mignini, who had previously been convicted of prosecutorial misconduct, was quick to paint Knox as an obsessive she-devil, fixated on perverse psycho-sexual and violent activity.

The Italian newspapers seemed to enjoy that characterization, or at least the narrative of spoiled college "girls gone wild" and getting mixed up in things they should have known to avoid.

There are ambiguities in the case of Amanda Knox, and for some of these Knox herself is to blame.

First, Knox blamed her boss at the restaurant bar where she worked, and it didn't play well that Patrick Lumumba was innocent. Knox says she mentioned Lamumba during a grueling 14 hour interrogation, and didn't mean to implicate him as a murderer.

Rudy Guede was arrested and convicted of Kercher's murder after his fingerprints and bloody footprints were lifted from the room where Kercher was slashed to death. Guede admitted to being with Kercher the night she was killed but says she was alive when he left the apartment.

It was Sollecito and Knox who called police to the crime scene. There was no attempt to flee. Their fawning behavior was captured on film and described as evidence of blithe indifference to the murder of Meredith Kercher.

Police investigator Edgardo Fabio Giobbi found it suspicious Knox and Sollecito were eating pizza three days after the murder. Who could eat pizza at a time like that?

Worse, Knox had swiveled her hips while accompanying Giobbi to the house where the murder took place after putting on crime scene booties.

When the top investigating cop Giobbi told Knox he was going to go next door to question neighbors about the crime, Knox broke down and began sobbing uncontrollably.

Was Knox handed a 25 year sentence for terminal silliness and vapidity or did a succubus invade her body and compel her to assault and kill? Jurors will decide within the hour.