Amanda Knox has just returned home after 4 years in an Italian Prison.
Knox was studying abroad in Italy when her roommate was murdered. She went to trial and was convicted of the murder of Meredith Kercher.
Amazingly, on appeal, she was acquitted of all charges. She returned to freedom and the states to be with her family this past Tuesday October 4, 2011.
Amanda made a statement before leaving Italy, “Those who wrote me, defended me, who stayed close to me, who prayed for me, we are forever grateful.”
Below is her emotional address to the press after her arrival at Seattle International Airport.
In a brief statement she described her ordeal, “I’m really overwhelmed right now …it seemed like everything wasn’t real…My family is the most important thing to me right now and I just want to go be with them. So, thank you for being there for me”
What do you think of Amanda’s behavior at her press conference? Do her expressions match her words? Do you believe she is being genuine?
I think that she’s genuine. She shows relief at the start of the conference and sadnes while she’s speaking.
What did I miss?
I haven’t watched in great detail but on the one watching I did see certain bits seemed incongruent with the words, too many hand to heart gestures, verbal cues, so I am not convinced it was genuine but I only saw it the once on news.
Personally, something about it seems contrived. At one point I saw a smile inconsistent with what she was saying.
The ‘brightness’ (a cooking term that refers to flavours like lemon vs less bright flavours like cream) of her emotion doesn’t seem to match the situation and the amount of time she has had to digest it. Even allowing for the situation to have triggered these feelings afresh, the hand gestures, as Robert said, seem contrived, and the emotional messages they convey do not seem to match her eye contact choices. The shaking of her voice, too: She was not caught off guard, nor was she camera shy, so what was that? What I was most intrigued with was the contrast btwn her body language when she got off the plane before the interview and then during the interview. She reminds me of some excellent liars I have met: They sell it because they practice a kind of ‘method acting’ where they convince themselves almost completely that they DO feel that way.
Dr. Matsumoto, you’ve got to be kidding. Dorothy finally escapes from her 4-year-long ordeal with the Wicked Witch and the flying monkeys and makes it back to Kansas and into the welcoming arms of Auntie Em, and you think that her complicated mixture of emotions upon landing is in any way contrived? Amanda’s biggest problem, from what I’ve seen, was a complete lack of guile, and consequently a stunning inability to impute evil motives to people who wanted to harm her for their own twisted reasons. From what I’ve read, Meredith Kercher’s British friends skipped town and her Italian roommates lawyered up as soon as the murder was discovered, The individual who left his DNA all over the crime scene also fled the country. Amanda stayed behind and tried to be helpful, which speaks volumes about her character.
The amount of illustrators she seems to putting out are abundant. I fell these are genuine and make her seem truthful. If she was guilty of murder and non anti-social we should see some guilt or shame, but even anti-socially, there’s no contempt, except maybe at the very end where there is a very slight movement of her upper left lip. But that’s probably just with reference to her pain.
Upon her speech pattern, I noticed that whenever she stopped to think, she wasn’t shooting out a ton of her agony, she was really focused on the words, and what she was going to say or what she had decided to say while on her way their, she has had four years. Any time she had to breath or pause for a slight moment, you would get a bit of the grief, but it isn’t as exaggerated as a liars might be.
She also seems to firmly believe that it was all of the people who defended her. A liar would be cautious or paranoid of the idea that there is someone out there because of them knowing it is false, and spreading that truth. She seems to not even think about that paranoia that a liar would have. At least there is no hint of it.
I just re-watched it a several times and have just notice she does actually have a lot of contempt, small, but there, shooting out. But this happens whenever she notes someone who has “helped” her, “defend” her, or “be with” her.
I expected to hear three words, ‘I am innocent”. If you locked me up for all these years and committed such an injustice against me, I would be clamoring to tell the world those three words. I would be defiant in getting them out in my anger at my perceived injustice!! Why didn’t we see anger? I found that perplexing…
There’s no reason for her to say “I am innocent” in this context because the matter is settled. She’s no longer being accused. Everybody around her knows that she’s innocent. Even the Italian legal system has declared that she is innocent, not just “not guilty.”
Wow I’m joining this conversation wayyy later. Laurie, hopefully you don’t take this personally, but I think your empathy for the girl clouds your assessment of whether shes genuine or not. (Totally not a bad thing by the way) If Dr. Matsumoto and Eyes for lies say they see something, I’m more inclined to give it some further thought as I did see certain things at the very end of the video. Not to say they are the ultimate authority on these things, but they’re talking about it in a purely scientific perspective