Predictably, Hinds and Blackston were convicted and sentenced to 5 to 10 years and 3 years, respectively. However, Hinds testified that Japanese police officials altered his statement to secure a more ironclad case:
At the Tokyo District Court, Hinds stated that Furlong had repeatedly asked him to put his hand on her neck. He says that he did so, but only used light pressure for periods of 30 seconds, and that’s what he told the Japanese police. Hinds’ lawyer is arguing that his statement was changed, and police wrote that he used pressure for periods of “two or three minutes.”
Do take care to flag and report the unsavory comments left by individuals who are absolutely tumescent over the prospect of a black male being treated at the hands of the Japanese prison system. Right about now, someone somewhere is looking up the katakana for "prison bitch."
Meanwhile, you'd think that Amanda Knox would be somewhere working out a book deal on her harrowing ordeal at the hands of Italian law enforcement while savoring her new-found freedom.
Turns out that freedom might be fleeting, after all:
Amanda Knox said in an emotional interview on Friday that news of the Italian court reinstating her murder conviction in the 2007 killing of her British roommate Meredith Kercher hit her "like a train."
"I did not expect this to happen," Knox told Robin Roberts on "Good Morning America. "I really expected so much better from the Italian justice system. They found me innocent before."
The 26-year-old shared a house in the Italian town of Perugia with Kercher, then 21, who was found partially naked in a pool of blood, her throat slashed.
Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 29, were convicted of the crime in 2009 and had spent four years in prison before their acquittal in 2011.
However, Italy’s highest court overturned the acquittal and ordered a new appeal, saying the first was riddled with “shortcomings, contradictions and inconsistencies.”
Though she was not in the Florence courtroom Thursday when Judge Alessandro Nencini sentenced her to 28 years and six months in prison, more than the 26 years she received at her first trial in 2011, she told Roberts she watched an Italian television station online to hear the verdict.
"I needed to hear it for myself," she said. "My whole family was there and I was listening and I'm the only one who knows Italian and I'm trying to listen and then tell them."
If the conviction's upheld, Knox will likely find herself on a one-way flight back to Italy:
"I will never go willingly back to the place where I ...," she said, pausing. "I'm going to fight this to the very end. It's not right and it's not fair. ... I'm going to do everything I can."
Apparently, Knox's (ex) boyfriend and co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito knew what was up and attempted to book it out of Italy, but wound up being stopped short of the Slovenian and Austrian borders.
It's amazing how circumstances can change in a short amount of time.
