Amanda Knox - Guilty By Appearance

I've had the same conversation with so many people today about Amanda Knox. Each one goes something like this:

"Knox has been freed then."
"Yeah. The scientific evidence was pretty flawed."
"True. Must have been hell for her."
"Sure. Young woman locked up for a crime she didn't commit."
"You know what?"
"What?"
"One thing I can't get over. She just looks guilty."

If Knox could hear what people are saying about her in my neck of the woods, she'd hear these words reverberating around her head. 'There's just something about her', 'It's her eyes', 'She doesn't look innocent', 'She's sneering at us'.

Police back in Victorian times had a failsafe method of detecting whether you were a member of the criminal classes. It all depended on the shape of your head and the quality of your features. It was called physiognomy.  And it was state of the art - having a unibrow, for instance, was a sure sign of guilt. There were men with callipers measuring the distance between your eyes and the size of your forehead. It was important to the Victorians because they believed that being a criminal was something in your phsycial make-up. It was genetic, if they'd known what genes were.

But we've moved on from that. We've progressed through real science. In our modern world it's what moves one generation on from the previous one. And there's no scientific evidence that puts Amanda at the scene of the crime, Meredith's bedroom.There's flimsy, circumstantial evidence, heresay, and a forced confession without witnesses. But none of Knox's DNA is there. It's difficult to murder somebody and not leave any DNA behind. There's plenty of Rudy Guede's.

So why does that little voice in our heads keep saying she's guilty? Look at any photo of her when she's not smiling. The hooded eyes. When eyes are that sunken, they have got to be hiding nefarious thoughts and deeds. They look like the entrance to caves that hold weapons of mass destruction. Then there are the eyebrows that arch in towards those eyes, as if tipping us off that she has secrets she's keeping from us.

But this is all nonsense. We are creatures of the scientific world. We are rational beings. We must banish the beliefs of our medieval forefathers. Yet they keep raising themselves up from their burial grounds to tap us on the shoulder. 'Look how far apart her eyes are. That's not right.' Shut up. 'Look at the pouty mouth, offering the promise of sexual favours.' Be quiet.

I want to be a man of the modern world. I want to think logically. I want to deny my superstitious ancestry. But something keeps dragging my mind back into the pit. At least I know that's what's happening. I can live with it.

Enjoy your freedom Amanda Knox. R.I.P. Meredith Kercher.

Mark Capell is the author of 'Run, Run, Run', available from Amazon and Amazon U.K.