Amanda Knox writes op-ed about woman’s manslaughter conviction
Aug 4, 2017, 8:34 AM
Michelle Carter listens to her sentencing for involuntary manslaughter for encouraging 18-year-old Conrad Roy III to kill himself. (Matt West/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)
(Matt West/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)
Amanda Knox is responding to a judge’s decision to convict a woman of involuntary manslaughter for convincing her boyfriend to kill himself through a series of text messages
In an L.A. Times op-ed, Knox writes that Michelle Carter needs professional help — the kind her boyfriend didn’t get before taking his own life.
Knox writes:
The very fact that suicide is illegal reveals how self-harm confuses our sympathies. The suicide is his own victim, his own murderer. We naturally want to blame someone for the murder, but we’re reluctant to further condemn the victim.
She wrote that she sees parallels in the “Femme Fatale” narrative prosecutors used during her murder trial in Italy.
Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, her boyfriend at the time, were convicted and acquitted twice over the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher. Knox was living in Italy through a study-abroad program when Kercher, her roommate, was found sexually assaulted and murdered. Prosecutors alleged Guede, Knox, and Sollecito had worked together. They both spent about four years behind bars.
Carter was sentenced this week to 15 months in jail for involuntary manslaughter and five years probation, The Associated Press reports. Now 20, Carter was 17 when Conrad Roy, her boyfriend at the time, was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in 2014.
Carter’s lawyer argued against jail time, instead asking for probation and mental health counseling. Her lawyer said Carter was struggling with mental health issues at the time she encouraged Conrad Roy to kill himself.
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