I'd been avoiding my friend Jens Söring for months. Whenever his emails arrived, I’d open a reply window and stare with dread at the blinking cursor. I no longer knew what to say to him, this man who'd spent 33 years in prison for a double homicide he swore he didn’t commit. /🧵 Jens had been convicted of murder in 1990. I had been convicted of murder nearly 20 years later. But the parallels between our cases were striking.

One of the most unexpected blessings of having spent time in prison, and being at the center of a such a public scandal, is that so many people have reached out to me to share their own stories. And I've learned there are so many ways to feel trapped in your own life...
/thread Some people are trapped by poverty, some by chronic illness, some by abusive family or romantic partners, some by the expectations of their community, some by their very own vision of who they are supposed to be, a vision handed down from their parents, or of their own making.

What's your favorite episode of Star Trek?

Here's mine:

TNG Season 5, Episode 24, "The Next Phase." It has everything: mindbending sci-fi plot, political intrigue, character growth, and an unmatched bromance between @levarburton and @BrentSpiner. Allow me to explain... A mishap from a Romulan science vessel causes Ensign Ro and Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge to become out of phase with the Enterprise. (Don't ask me how that works.) They become essentially like ghosts. No one can see or hear them. They think they might be dead.

Remeber this poster? It hangs in Fox Mulder's office. Now I love Fox Mulder, and the X-Files, but this is a problem. Our beliefs should be divorced from our desires. Otherwise, we end up burning witches. And yet, I find myself wanting to believe in aliens... The universe is so large that statistically, intelligent life is very likely out there somewhere. Perhaps a lot of it! But if so, where is everybody? This is, of course, the Fermi Paradox.
waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-…

16 years after my arrest, I'm still on trial in Italy, still fighting to clear my name. Meanwhile, the man who murdered my roommate is free from prison, still accusing me, and still, it seems, harming young women. Are we living in a simulation? As you might imagine, I've received a lot of interview requests to talk about these recent developments. What will my new trial focus on? Will I have to testify in Italy? (hint: yes). What do I think about Rudy Guede facing new charges of sexual assualt?

If you were to ask my family to describe me, they’d likely say that I’m a nerd, that I like to dance and sing. They’d say that I'm kind, sometimes naive, and that I go dead possum when I’m scared. What they wouldn't say is: girl gone wild, drug addled femme fatale. And yet...
/🧵 that was the image of me painted by the prosecution and the tabloid media: Foxy Knoxy, the cunning seductress. And while I saw myself so grossly misrepresented, I also got to know the other women I shared cells with in Capanne prison.

Rudy Guede, the man who killed Meredith Kercher, has just been arrested on charges of assault for allegedly beating up his 23-year-old ex-girlfriend six months after he was released from prison. Prosecutors asked for house arrest while he awaits trial. Instead, he's been given a restraining order and ankle monitor. I feel sorry for his ex-girlfriend, and hope she is getting the support she needs.

Radical Islam has always confused progressive sympathies, but the current moment is a true test for the Enlightenment values at the heart of western democracies. Freedom of speeh is under threat. Freedom of religion is in conflict with human rights.
/thread The shoutdowns and pile-ons of campus culture and social media have long been eroding our freedom of speech, not in a stricly legalistic sense, but in the practical exercise of that right, which is so foundational to democracy.

For musicians to make it big, it helps to have a big ego. Any competitive arts career is like this. You have to transcend rejection for years believing that you have something amazing to offer. That's why it's so refreshing to meet a musician who's figured out the ego trap.
/🧵 This is one of the central insights of Buddhism. The more you identify with your "self", the more you suffer. But you are not your "self." As Alan Watts put it, "You are no less than the universe." There is a non-woo woo way in which this is true.

https://twitter.com/AlanWattsDaily/status/1727555240247836784

Learn to read, Dave. I did mention Meredith. And the whole thread is about gratitude for others in my life. (somehow this is "me me me"?).

But more importantly, you've given me an opportunity to talk about being trapped in a story imposed on you by others, or by yourself...
/🧵

https://twitter.com/davidbelle_/status/1727950941817590065

I'm not sure what the term for this would be, but I'll coin one: "narrative monism," the idea that a story can have only one subject, only one theme, only one arc, only one raison d'etre. Your life is about THIS, not THAT.

When I was finally exonerated in 2015, I just wanted my old life back, to return to being an anonymous student. I soon realized that life no longer existed. I was chased by paparazzi, photographed by classmates. I didn’t know what to do but hide.

/thread I got a job working minimum wage below ground level in an antiquarian book store. I didn’t make friends. My face was in newspapers and magazines and on billboards in Times Square, but my world was so, so small. I didn’t feel like the protagonist of my own life.

The simmering debates about cancel culture are flaring up as posters of kidnapped children get ripped down & students sign statements that minimize the horrors of Oct 7. Do such actions merit cancellation? I have thoughts; I was canceled before it was cool.

/🧵 By now, we all know what cancellation looks like. It’s public exile. It’s the reduction of your complexity as a human being to a deplorable act, whether based in reality or not. In my case, I received a life-sentence in the court of public opinion as “the girl accused of murder.”

As the horror continues to unfold in the Middle East, I've refrained from commenting as I'm not an expert in either the causes nor solutions to this crisis. What I am quite good at is recognizing confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and tribal hostility.

/thread I'm seeing it everywhere across the political spectrum, from far-left to far-right. Compassion is being displaced by political point-scoring, empathy by bigotry.

I'm on trial in Italy again...and this is a good thing.

As everyone knows, on March 27th, 2015, the Court of Cassation definitively acquitted me and Raffaele Sollecito of the murder of Meredith Kercher, per non aver commesso il fatto—for not having committed the act.

/thread It was an unprecedented decision from the court, exonerating us on the grounds of factual innocence, citing stunning errors in the prosecution's case and culpable omissions. It was a clear vindication. But this final ruling also upheld my conviction for slander.

This is the girl whose teammates called her “Foxy Knoxy.” This is the girl the world gleefully twisted into a psycho slut. On this #InternationalWomensDay, I’m thinking about my daughter, and hoping she can grow up in a world that treats her better than it treated me.
/🧵 I’m also thinking about my roommate, Meredith, and all the female victims of male violence around the world, who deserve to be safe, alive, and to walk through the world without fear of rape and murder.

After I was convicted of murder and sentenced to 26 years in prison, when the earth dropped out from beneath me, and global shame rained down on top of me, I had my first ever epiphany.

/thread I didn’t know what an epiphany should feel like, but it was…cold. Like a clear breeze blowing in and brushing the back of your neck, making your hairs stand up.

The murder of George Floyd, the attempted execution of Melissa Lucio, and a cognitive scientist facing cancellation...what do these things have in common? Forensic pathologists can influence the course of justice and you should be terrified at how bias can affect them.🧵1/30 2. When Derek Chauvin was tried for the murder of Floyd, Maryland’s former top medical examiner testified that Floyd had died of heart disease, not police restraint. This was contrary to the Hennepin County medical examiner's office which ruled Floyd’s death a homicide.

It’s that time of year again! Without my consent, yet another entertainment product has been made that is “inspired by” my wrongful conviction, and as with #STILLWATER, this new TV series in France paints me as manipulative & guilty of murder. /🧵

https://twitter.com/amandaknox/status/1420871392266911746

This new French show is called Une Mère Parfaite, The Perfect Mother, and it’s adapted from a 2014 novel by American author @ninadarnton. I’ll come back to the French show. For now, I want to focus on this novel.

A few months ago, in that blurry haze of new motherhood, I left my infant daughter Eureka on the couch for just a few seconds. She rolled and slipped and tumbled to the floor, hitting her head, then burst out crying. /a thread to #SaveMelissaLucio I held her against my chest, crying myself, trying to calm her, feeling like the worst mother in the world. My mom reassured me that I'd hit my own head in the exact same way more than once. And sure enough, Eureka was fine. Not even a bruise.

It’s #InternationalWomensDay, and I’m thinking about the women who’ve had my back, but also the ones who haven’t. I’d like to share with you two stories about casual cruelty from other women through the lens of my wrongful conviction. One of them has a twist ending. /🧵 I’m not a huge fan of murder mystery thrillers (shocker, I know). But I’m even less a fan when Foxy Knoxy pops up as shorthand for “weirdo slutty killer” in fiction, like it does in the latest book by Paula Hawkins, author of the #1 NYT bestseller The Girl on the Train.

It’s #WrongfulConvictionDay! Please RETWEET to help me celebrate these champions of justice who are fighting everyday to free wrongly convicted men and women! Here, I interviewed the founders of the @Innocence Project in NY, Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck. crimestory.com/2020/04/20/ama… On the opposite coast, @JustinoBrooks, @MSemanchik of the @CA_Innocence Project! Also here Bill Oberly of the AK Innocence Project. Exonerees @lifeafterten and @BrianBanksFREE