Her final appeals trial in the 2007 murder of her former roommate is scheduled to begin within the month, but those hoping Amanda Knox's latest conviction for the crime will be overturned may need to be prepared for the American to head to prison after all.

Does Amanda Knox Have Some Celebrity Support?

According to John W. Head, the Robert W. Wagstaff Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Kansas, those who have continued to maintain Knox's innocence in the United States don't really understand the Italian judicial system-and therefore, have no basis for their claims that she has been unfairly targeted and convicted.

"If someone is going to offer broad criticisms of an entire legal and criminal justice system, they ought to at least have an understanding of the culture of the country and its legal system," he writes in a new journal article where he studies the case. "I doubt that was the case with most of the people who were offering the loudest criticisms in the Amanda Knox trial."

Petition Aims For Exoneration Of Amanda Knox

In his article, Head writes how the American and Italian systems work in extremely different ways-and reveals his theory that many who have criticized the way the initial trials against Knox and her ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito don't truly know the differences, and have based their opinions and judgments on the situation entirely upon their knowledge of the American system.

According to Head, those who complained for example about the fact that the jury in Knox's case wasn't sequestered, failed to understand that Italian juries rarely are, and also don't consist of 12 people made up of the defendant's peers-but rather consists of three judges and six 'lay assessors of the facts.'

In addition, he writes, many fail to realize that only certain elements of the American legal system have been brought to the other systems around the world over the years, and it's hard to pick and choose which ones should be brought into one system or another.

Overall, Head says, Americans don't truly comprehend the case well enough to either truly throw their support behind Knox, or to decide she is unequivocally guilty.

"I think we simply miss a lot because we don't pay close enough attention to the underlying cultural differences between legal systems and especially nations," he wrote. "Unfortunately, our response is often inadequate because of that."

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