Amanda Knox prosecutors accused of wasting public money: Daily Telegraph reports
Amanda Knox waves to supporters as she makes her first appearance at SeaTac Airport after arriving in Seattle following her release from prison in Italy on October 4, 2011. Knox arrived home a day after she was acquitted of murder and sexual assault charges and freed from jail in Italy.
The Italian prosecutors who tried to sentence Amanda Knox to life in prison are now under investigation, the Daily Telegraph reported. Giuliano Mignini and his deputy, Manuela Comodi, are accused of wasting public money during the trial, specifically by creating an "avatar" video.
The 20 minute film showed an animated, '"avatar" version of Amanda Knox murdering an animated Meredith Kercher. The video was shown to jurors in 2009, when Knox was on trial for Kercher's murder. It cost 182,000 euros to produce, according to the Telegraph. The National Audit Office is now investigating whether the video was necessary to the case.
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It's not the first time that Italian prosecutor Giuliana Mignini has come under fire.
In October, Knox said that Italian authorities interviewed her for 53 hours over four days without reading her legal rights, providing her a lawyer or even an interpreter, the New York Daily News reported, and an Italian Supreme Court upheld her claims.
The Committee to Protect Journalists also wrote a letter to the President of Italy last year, claiming that Mignini threatened and harassed journalists who covered the Knox trial.
Knox was arrested in 2007 on charges of murdering Meredith Kercher, but Knox's conviction was overturned in October. The case against Knox was based mostly on circumstantial evidence, the New York Times reported, and the main forensic evidence was also "throw into doubt" last summer by a report of independent experts.
A lengthy Rolling Stone Magazine investigation from last summer also criticized the prosecution's handling of the case.