Amanda Knox has a lot to say about the conviction of Michelle Carter, the woman whose texts urged her boyfriend to suicide.
In a new op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times, Knox argues that Carter was wrongfully convicted and watching the trial play out in the media gave her a “sickening sense of deja vu.”
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Knox was at the center of widespread international media attention during a years-long investigation into the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, in Italy. In multiple trials, Knox was convicted by an Italian court before the decision was ultimately overturned by Italiy’s highest court in 2015.
“Involuntary manslaughter is when a drunk driver crashes into another vehicle, when a gunman shoots at tin cans in his suburban backyard, when a carnival ride operator fails to ensure that all passengers are strapped in, and as a result an innocent person dies,” Knox argued.
“Encouraging your boyfriend to follow through with his own death wish should not qualify,” she said.
She added, however, that it’s “hard to feel sympathy for Carter” and that the young woman “may not be innocent in a moral or philosophical sense.”
Carter was convicted in June and on Thursday was sentenced to 15 months.
“We naturally want to blame someone for the murder, but we’re reluctant to further condemn the victim,” Knox continued. “This emotional paradox makes it hard for us to find closure. But with Roy’s suicide, we have, in the person of Carter, another party to hold responsible. It’s much easier psychologically to reproach a villain than it is to hold in one’s mind the contradictory feelings we have about suicide.”
Knox went on to write that Carter had her own struggles with mental illness and that her bad choices would haunt her “for the rest of her life.”
“By holding her accountable for Roy’s death, we increase the tally of victims in this case, we ignore the mental health factors that lead to suicide, and we lern nothing about how to prevent it,” Knox wrote.
“It’s hard to feel sympathy for Michelle Carter. It’s also hard to feel sympathy for drug addicts or to understand obsessively suicidal adolescents. Even so, we have to try. Just because it’s hard to feel sympathy and understanding, that doesn’t mean it isn’t the right — and just — thing to do,” she concluded.
Photo Credit: Twitter / @LaTimesOpinion
