My Extraordinary Evening with Amanda Knox

I had an extraordinary experience the other night.  That – "extraordinary" – a word I don’t use often.

My coworking space sponsored a fundraiser for The Innocence Center, a small but mighty organization that works to free innocent people who have been wrongfully convicted.

The evening’s headliner was Amanda Knox, which is where the extraordinary comes in.  That’s the last time I’ll use that word, so I’ll simply say that Amanda was otherworldly.

Perhaps that’s because Amanda has inhabited some other worlds.

Briefly, as many of you know her name and parts of her story: Amanda was wrongfully convicted of murdering her housemate in Perugia, Italy, while she was on a college exchange program there.  She was convicted and spent four years in prison before she was exonerated and freed.  My friend, Greg Hampikian, was part of the team that brought about this reversal of fortune – he’s one of the world’s leading forensic DNA experts and was also honored that evening.

Amanda’s a sprite of a woman – friendly, open, welcoming, and whip smart.  Her story was spellbinding – she held the crowd at my coworking space in thrall as she spoke.  It was so quiet you could hear your conscience commingling with your heart.

I’ve got a connection here.  My daughter is the same age as Amanda.  She was in Perugia on a college exchange program the same time as Amanda.  So, I’ve been intently following Amanda's case since the time it happened, often thinking, "There but for the grace of ...."

But there’s another thread that started much earlier.

My journey with wrongful convictions began decades ago when I shared a stage with Sister Helen Prejean, an advocate abolishing the death penalty and the inspiration for Susan Sarandon's Oscar-winning performance in the movie, "Dead Man Walking." As we were eating lunch prior to her talk at a City Club of Boise event, she asked me how I felt about capital punishment.

I told her I was in favor of the death penalty, as I didn’t think we should spend extra money to house and care for convicted murders as they lived out their remaining years in prison.

Thank God for Sister Helen, as over the course of a rubber-chicken banquet lunch she quickly and kindly disarmed me of my misconceptions, citing facts and figures on how much more it costs to execute someone than it does to incarcerate them.

Next, she illuminated me to the reality of so many innocent people being on death row awaiting execution for crimes they did not commit.

And of course there's the moral disconnect of state-sponsored killing, as well as the inhumanity and ineptitude of the methods, as Tennessee so recently displayed.

As I said, this was a long time ago – sometime in the 1990s. I was green and have been forever thankful for Sister Helen’s impromptu intervention.

Not long after that, the universe tapped me on the shoulder again, this time with an assignment of becoming a guardian angel.  I met a man who became my close friend, someone who had been wrongfully convicted of murder, came within three days of being executed, and was finally released from prison after 22 years of incarceration.

For the last ten years of his life, I looked out for him – from raising funds to house him to taking him grocery shopping and to his medical appointments.  I’m currently working on a stage play about his life.

The universe has a way of teaching us lessons, eh?

My path continued with the creation of the Inspiration Alley Project in 2022, an outdoor gallery of public art with large-scale murals of social and environmental justice champions that rings my coworking space.  One of the first murals honored Maya Moore, a Hall of Fame basketball player who in the prime of her playing career quit basketball to pursue the freedom of a wrongfully convicted man. That man, Jonathan Irons, was exonerated and later became her husband.

(Our mural even got a cameo in the ESPN Films 30 for 30 "Breakaway," a documentary of her life.)

As for today, I’m still processing my evening with Amanda Knox—it was that powerful, a night of magic.  If you ever have a chance to hear her tell her story in person, don't miss it.

(In the meanwhile, here’s a good episode with her on the Armchair Expert podcast with Dak Shepherd. And last year's docu-drama about her, The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, gets strong reviews.)

I’m writing this today because there are many people in our prisons who have been wrongfully convicted, some of whom are on death row.  It’s tough to imagine what that might feel like, to be near-powerless to prove your innocence.

Giving season will be shortly upon us, and I’m guessing many of you open your hearts and wallets before year-end to support charitable endeavors.  So, I’d like to ask you to share a slice of your largesse with The Innocence Center, on whose board Amanda serves – or to any of the related Innocence Network projects that might be closer to your home.

Someone somewhere is sitting in a prison cell for a crime they did not commit.  And they need you.

Godspeed, friends.

Russ

Godspeed: good fortune; success (used as a wish to a person starting on a journey, a new venture, etc.)