Waiting To Be Heard - A Memoir Part 50

Night fell, leaving the air outside damp and cold. Hours pa.s.sed. I felt tingly, buzzing beneath my own skin. The verdict had to be coming soon.

Finally, I climbed into bed wearing everything but my shoes. I lay in the dark cell, which was illuminated only by the TV still talking about me and my future.

Chapter 29

December 4, 2009

It was just after 11 P.M. I lay in my cot thinking, Maybe it won't even happen tonight, when a guard came by. "Amanda, are you ready?" she called, putting her key in the lock.

I jumped out of bed and started to smooth my sheets. "No!" Tanya and Fanta shouted. "Don't do that! You have to leave your bed unmade. It's good luck! It means you're not coming back."

I put on my shoes, took a quick look around, and walked out, leaving my cellmates standing at the cancello-the cell's gatelike door-watching me walk down the hall.

It was surreal to go outside at this hour. Since my arrest, the only time I'd been out later than 3 P.M.-the end of pa.s.seggio-was on court days. Even then I was usually back in my cell before dark. I'd only felt the night air and seen the moon through my window.

It was damp and frigid, the full moon obscured by fog.

This is the last time, I thought as I climbed into the van, waiting for the guards to slam first the bars and then the double doors in back. After dozens of these trips, I no longer paid attention to the routine. But tonight I felt I had to take it in. This is it! Never again! I'd be coming back to Capanne to gather my things in a squad car.

My heart was thudding, and the only thought looping through my mind was the same one I'd been saying to the universe all day. Please, please, please, please. I was shaky with nerves and cold. But underneath the anxiety was a hard kernel of certainty. It was almost as if I were in on a secret that no one else knew. I'm getting out! I'm going home!

Usually the drive into town made me nauseated, but this time I didn't focus on the van's swaying. I had a physical memory of every curve in the road. I got frustrated when the guard closed the shade between the prisoners' compartment and the front seat, so I couldn't see out. I always strained to see farmers working green fields or the stretch of road where sunflowers grew-a world saturated with color and filled with hope instead of the beige-and-gray universe I inhabited at Capanne.

But tonight it didn't matter. I was lost in my thoughts. The jury must have gone over all the evidence and seen that it doesn't fit. Raffaele and I couldn't have killed Meredith. The judge would read the counts and announce "a.s.solta"-"acquitted." Anything but "colpevole"-"guilty."

Some days it had seemed I waited in the van forever before being taken inside the courthouse, but everything was happening quickly now. I was whisked inside and up the stairs. My sisters Ashley and Delaney were standing by the double doors as the guards propelled me past. They each called out, "I love you, Amanda!" in heartbreakingly sweet voices.

I could have touched them if the guards had let me. I was that close.

The Hall of Frescoes had been transformed. All the chairs had been taken out, and hundreds of people were standing jammed together. The room was as quiet as it was packed. No journalists called out to me. Everyone was silent. Expectant.

I'd just seen Mom, Dad, Chris, Ca.s.sandra, my aunt Christina, and Deanna that morning, and here they were again, standing in a line, smiling, everyone mouthing the same words: "I love you, I love you."

I took my place between Carlo and Luciano, squeezing Luciano's bearlike hand. "Coraggio," he whispered, squeezing back.

It was four minutes past midnight. The court bell rang once. The secretary announced, "La corte," for the last time. As the judges and jurors filed in, it was as though everyone in the courtroom strained forward, all the energy and nervousness and antic.i.p.ation driving to the same point in time and s.p.a.ce.

Each of the six counts against me-murder, carrying a weapon, rape, theft, simulating a burglary, and slander-had been a.s.signed letters A through F, in that order.

In the seconds before the judge started reading, I felt both a downward tug in my stomach and wooziness in my head that made me feel as if my body were being pulled apart. It was all going to be over. Please, please, please.

"On the counts of A, B, C, E, and partially for count D"-Judge Ma.s.sei began reading Raffaele's and my verdicts simultaneously, his voice flat and so quiet that I struggled to hear, willing him to say "a.s.solta"-"the defendants Sollecito, Raffaele, and Knox, Amanda, are found ..."

"No!" someone behind me wailed.

"Colpevole," Judge Ma.s.sei said. "Defendant Knox, Amanda, is also found colpevole for count F."

Flattened by the words, I could no longer stand. I fell against Luciano, burying my head against his chest, moaning, "No, no, no!"

I didn't hear the judge say, "I'm granting the attenuanti"-"extenuating circ.u.mstances," meaning a lower sentence. "I'm sentencing Knox, Amanda, to twenty-six years and Sollecito, Raffaele, to twenty-five years. This court is adjourned."

My life cleaved in two. Before the verdict, I'd been a wrongly accused college student about to walk free. I was about to start my life over after two years.

Now everything I'd thought I'd been promised had been ripped away.

I was a convicted murderer.

I was less than nothing.

I didn't hear people cheering or jeering. Some were calling me an a.s.sa.s.sin. Others were calling for my freedom. The only sounds I picked up, above the chaos, were my mom's and Deanna's sobs rising up behind me and smothering me in pain.

Then the guards on either side of me lifted me under my arms and carried me out of the room. Ashley and Delaney must have been standing in the same spot I'd seen them before, waiting to hug and kiss me in celebration, but I could not see through my tears.

Carlo stopped us just before we started down the stairs. He was breathless. "I'm so sorry! We're going to win! We're going to win. Amanda, we're going to save you. Be strong."

It was only a second. And then we were gone. Instead of putting me in the tiny holding cell where I usually ate lunch or waited for the van, the guards sat me in a chair. I was moaning, "No, no, no," hysterically. Raffaele was beside me, saying, "Amanda, it's okay, it's okay."

One of the guards kept saying, "Come on. Be a good girl. Hold on. It's going to be okay."

I kept crying, "It's impossible, it's not fair, it wasn't true, I need to go home."

They led me outside to the van and slammed the barred door.

As we were pulling out, I took one look outside. The guard driving the van hadn't pulled down the shade, and I could see the cameras flashing. Then I slumped over in my seat and wailed, gasping for breath.

My sentence was all over the news.

"Twenty-six years is a strange sentence," one of the guards said. "If they wanted to get you they would have said, 'Life.' It's almost like they were trying to give you hope for the future. You have such good behavior. In ten years you'll be able to work outside the prison during the day."

They were trying to rea.s.sure me.

But I could not be comforted.

Part Three

CAPANNE II

Chapter 30

December 2009October 2010