Has the Amanda Knox trial made you reconsider traveling abroad?

Not a bit. I lived about 10 years or more in various countries in Asia and in Australia, and I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. I believe that getting out of one’s mother culture to be one of the best forms of education there can possibly be.

I am well aware of the laws of various countries when I travel and manage to stay inside them.

Nope! I could care less!

Not at all. I simply don’t hang around murder scenes, or get in trouble at all.

Actually, if this makes people travel less, I’ll travel more!

Nope… I can pretty much kick booty wherever I go. *Except for Mexico City. When even many of the natives themselves don’t feel safe there, you kinda know it’s not a good idea to travel there.

@GabrielsLamb‘s has a good point. There are some places I would not travel to. I don’t believe I want to go hiking in Iraq anywhere or touring through the back streets of Juarez, Mexico.

@Hawaii_Jake Exactly… Thanks for saying it better than me, LOL I do that sometimes but that IS what I meant.

I think Aruba is a no for me. I still want to go to Italy, even though I am not fond of their judicial system.

It could happen here.
She’s free. I haven’t been rabidly following the case, but from the accounts I’ve seen and read, she is innocent. YAY!!

I went to Italy last spring. As I was saying bye to friends before heading to the airport, on waved and yelled “don’t kill your roommate! Have a great time!” and I had a great time and I didn’t kill my roomie.

Please don’t let this put you off international travel. All that’s required is some planning. Look into the local laws and follow them. That’s enough to keep the vast majority of people safe.

I haven’t seen any news in the last few days so, did she get off ,as in free now?

GQ. I saw on CNN (Erin Burnett) they had legal expert saying that in Italy, it’s supposed to be “Innocent until proven guilty” but that’s not the reality. Also, the prosecutor has the right to appeal the appeal. Since her conviction was overturned on appeal, the prosecutor can go to the highest court of appeals and appeal to get her found guilty, which is nuts. If I were her, I would leave Italy and never return.

@jca I think that’s why her family is getting her out of there pronto. I agree. It sounds as if they may try to “dig up” evidence to retry again. Their appeals process allows for new evidence each time.

I’m not fond of a partial judge for the firt trial you receive, either. That was info to me. No thank you!

Any unseen evidence will surely be inadmissible by now wouldn’t it? Fake paid witnesses?Seems to me it would almost need to be contrived. If only she would have had someone “Johnny Cochran” -like, the first time. And can they legally extradite from the US?

@woodcutter I don’t know how they’d get her back to Italy. I’m not sure how it would look to make her have another trial since so many Americans were watching this one.

And any evidence they find, they can use. They do not have to use the case evidence like we do here. Personally, I think she and the Italian boyfriend got convicted because the murderer made up a story after he got convicted…

Now the courts are saying he claimed he killed the girl with two others…that’s how his sentence was arranged, so the court will be “looking” for who the other two are. Meaning, this is not done yet.

They said on CNN that we do extraditions with Italy, and that we have gotten criminals extradited from there, mob related, so we would have to reciprocate. However, since this is so in the public eye and now making Italy look bad, it is not likely to be a successful appeal if the prosecutor (who apparently has political aspirations which is why he’s so “on it”) tries to appeal the appeal.

It’s crazy, and would make me leery of Italy or sending my child to study in Italy, if ever the opportunity arose.

It also makes me appreciate the legal system we have in this country, which is far from perfect but so much better than the Italian system. Things we take for granted as just and right are not the case in Italy.

It makes me reconsider traveling to Italy without having resources back home (namely, money and a killer lawyer on retainer) that I could use if things went badly. After all, Amanda Knox did largely obey the laws (smoking pot is not the same as killing someone), and she was arrested and convicted for murder. Just because you obey the laws doesn’t mean society and the legal system will recognize you as doing so.

I think the govt. would find a way not not allow extradition. They’d catch hell from us.

@Blackberry The murder happened in her apartment. She didn’t know about it till she got home. She kind of didn’t have any choice but to ‘hang around’ the murder scene.

@Dutchess_III Oh yeah, oops lol.

I’d be leery of Aruba still. Italy? Not so much hell, investigators in the states make big mistakes similar to the ones the Italians did. Using the same swab to check different areas for DNA? Really? That’s a pretty big screw up and one that surely has been done in the states too. Go, travel. just don’t be a dumb ass when you are a guest in a different country. It shouldn’t be too hard to do.

@woodcutter: Investigators in the US screw up all the time, and our court system is not perfect. However, when our courts decide someone is innocent, they walk free. They cannot be tried again for the same crime. If you’re found innocent of murder, you walk out the door and don’t come back. In Italy, apparently, when the court decides someone is innocent, even when the appeals court decides someone is innocent, the prosecutor has a right to appeal that. That’s a tad on the scary side, to me.

@jca And that Italy doesn’t really have this idea of “beyond a reasonable doubt”.

Yeah..don’t piss me off @Blackberry! :)