Victims Rights and the Death Penalty - It's None of Your Business

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Samantha Gaimer, I interviewed for my podcast Labyrinths and she has this wonderful, this very fascinating, but inconvenient perspective for the law enforcement and even victims rights side of things. The last thing that she wanted was to go through a very public trial when really all she wanted was there to be an acknowledgement between her and her perpetrator. And it's fascinating to me that prosecutors want to put victims in a position of making impact statements at sentencing hearings, but only, only if they're asking for a harsher sentence,. never if they’re asking for mercy.

Amanda Knox spent four years in an Italian prison for a crime she did not commit. In the fall of 2007, the 20-year-old college coed left Seattle to study abroad in Italy, but her life was shattered when her roommate was murdered in their apartment. After a controversial trial, Amanda was convicted and imprisoned. But in 2011, an appeals court overturned the decision and vacated the murder charge. Free at last, she returned home to the U.S., where she remained silent until she released the memoir of her ordeal, Waiting to Be Heard. Unfortunately, after the publication of her book she was tried and convicted again in an Italian court, only to see that conviction overturned by the Italian Supreme Court. She cannot be tried again, but in the court of public opinion she has been on trial since that fatal day in 2007. Here she shares with listeners her story and all she has learned from her experiences and what lessons we can all take from adversity.