The verdict on Amanda Knox's appeal draw a close to the four-year-long saga of "Foxy Knoxy" but has showed more prejudices against south European states. Since the verdict was quashed on lack of evidence the western media has drawn out its knives and taken to not only the Italian justice system but the police force and marked them out as incompetent and dodgy.
Amanda Knox has been portrayed by western media as a sex-crazed, man-eating psychopath. One commentator from the Telegraph has suggested that 'Meredith Kercher has become a footnote in the life of Amanda Knox', which to some extent is true. However this is only true because of the media circus created around a young American woman who is sexually liberated and has had this liberation depicted as a psychological problem which would make her murdering her flatmate all of a sudden very plausible. This depiction of a femme fatal that has been hanging over Knox for four years is nothing new. Stockport's murdering nurse or 'Saline-serial-killer', Rebecca Leighton, was often referred to with pictures of her on a night out alluding to her promiscuity.
The other issue of why "Foxy Knoxy" should still be behind bars according to many of the western media is a biased against the southern European states being incompetent to carry out any form of justice. The issue at the trial a 'lack of condemning evidence' and it was soon pointed out that the police had spoiled it with a clumsy approach on the first instance with the scene. This is not the first time that the incompetence of a police force has been blamed for a miscarriage of justice on behalf of a British national abroad. Back in 2007, after the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Portugal, the media's frenzy after years without any leads led to it being the Portuguese polices' fault.
The lack of faith in those southern state police forces comes from an obsession with the lazy and corrupt view of the systems in place in the backwards south. With Berlusconi being a corrupt pantomime villain in the structured states of northern and central Europe it can only seem obvious that the other powers in Italy are also up to misdemeanors and dodgy dealings.