Can you get a fair trial in Italy?

As the whole world knows, Amanda Knox has been acquitted of the murder of Meredith Kercher (so was her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito but he doesn't get as much airtime). There are lessons to be learned from this and I want first to refer to the justice system in Britain, which has its faults but seems to me inherently fairer.

'Chief Superintendent X said he was unable to answer questions about the alleged crime, for fear of prejudicing an ongoing enquiry'. You've heard it hundreds of times, and in particular that word 'alleged'; newspapers are prevented from printing what they believe to be the facts in advance of the trial. The reasoning is simple: it might prejudice the minds of the jury if they read a lot of irrelevant or unsubstantiated opinion, and thus the accused would not get a fair trial.

Italy has no such qualms.

Let us take the only case(s) with an even higher profile than that of Amanda Knox: those relating to Silvio Berlusconi. His latest trial, for fraud, involved quite a bit of 'phone tapping. From this emerged all manner of details of his private life, quite irrelevant to the fraud case, which have been plastered all over the newspapers. How did they get hold of what was supposed to be court evidence? The police and prosecuting authorities sold it to the newspapers.

And this went on with the Knox / Sollecito case as well. Even before the trial began we were treated to a barrage of comments about her: that she was manipulative, that she took drugs, that she was getting the sort of sex ordinary Perugians don't get (except with the ubiquitous prostitutes). None of this was relevant except as a means to poison the minds of the jury, and it is to the credit of the 2 magistrates and 6 lay people that they eventually freed her.

There were other issues as well, of course: the knife, which had Knox and Sollecito's DNA on it (they had been using it for cooking) was claimed also to have Meredith Kercher's DNA but it turned out there was no evidence for that. When one commentator said that there was no evidence that Sollecito and Kercher were even there, and that 'someone would have to pay for this' suddenly her bra clasp appeared in the bedroom. And finally it emerged that the chief investigator had been convicted of fabricating evidence in another high profile murder case but was appealing the verdict and therefore not suspended: his employment rights were more important than Amanda Knox's liberty.

Shortly before their first conviction I heard a Perugian say that they would be found guilty at the first trial, because the good citizens wanted a quick result, preferably with a foreigner (and a manipulative, drug-taking, sex-enjoying foreigner at that!) but that she would be released on appeal because there was insufficient evidence and because the Perugians didn't want such a high profile prisoner.

And so it has turned out to be.

To paraphrase Marcellus, 'Something is rotten in the State of Italy'.