PERUGIA, Italy — A day after being labeled as “diabolical” by one lawyer, American student Amanda Knox was compared Tuesday to cartoon character Jessica Rabbit, as an Italian court continued to hear her appeal against her conviction for the murder of her British housemate.
Giulia Bongiorno, the lawyer for Knox’s co-defendant and on-off boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, said she had been portrayed as a “man eater ” and a “femme fatale, obsessed with decadent literature and sex.” But in fact she is “a faithful woman” more akin to celluloid sex siren Jessica Rabbit, who famously pleaded, “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.”
On Monday Carlo Pacelli, the lawyer for Patrick Lumumba — a barman who is seeking damages from Knox as part of a civil case running alongside the murder appeal — said the 24-year old Seattle native had “a double-faced soul.”
One side is “angelic, good, compassionate, and in some ways even saintly,” but the other side of Knox is “Lucifer-like, demonic, satanic, diabolic” and “longs to live out borderline extreme behavior.”
Prosecutors maintain that 21-year-old Meredith Kercher from Surrey, southeastern England was killed in a drug-fueled sex game at the home she shared with Knox in the medieval university town of Perugia in central Italy in November 2007.
Knox, 24, and Sollecito, 27, were sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison respectively in their original trial in 2009, but have always protested their innocence. A third person, Rudy Guede, was convicted separately and is serving a 16-year sentence.
A verdict in the appeal trial is expected in early October.