Amanda Knox demonstrates why it's generally not wise to smoke pot in a foreign country

The Amanda Knox story is all over the media in the US. Sure, part of it is that she's a cute White girl, but this is one of those American-(possibly)-screwed-over-in-a-foreign-country situations that make for nice fodder in the battle for eyeballs on the 24/7 news stations:

The expatriate American student has been the mysterious, ambivalent Mona Lisa face plastered across television, websites and newspapers since a few days after Halloween 2007. According to Italian authorities and their partisans in the blogosphere, where her case has been strenuously debated, behind her beatific smile lies a psycho hedonist capable of depraved murder. But family and friends insist she's just a granola-crunching athlete and honor student from Seattle who has, through bad luck, become the poster child for the perils that await American girls caught up in the dark side of Italy.

This two-year-old murder is in the news because Ms Knox finally testified in court:

On Friday, in six hours of testimony, Knox finally spoke for herself, after a year and a half of silence and media speculation on the likely motives for the crime. She accused Italian police of hitting her and repeatedly calling her a "stupid liar," bullying her into a false statement on the fifth night after the murder she has been charged with. She reeled out what she said was an imagined tale of what "might have happened," placing herself with her British roommate Meredith Kercher on the night Kercher's throat was slit in the picturesque cottage they shared overlooking the Umbrian hills. Kercher bled to death after what police say was an agonizing two hours. Prosecutors say Knox cut her roommate's throat after Kercher refused to participate in group sex with the American and her alleged accomplices.

Wow. If that's what Italians think of Americans, I wouldn't go teach English there, either. 

The reason for my headline is that poor Ms Knox — if she is innocent — is having serious trouble defending herself because the night of the murder is lost in a haze of pot smoke:

Knox, a 21-year-old student from Seattle, said that because she was stoned on the night her roommate died she was confused about what happened that night, a confusion that muddled her original statements to Italian detectives.

I wish the Italian prosecutors would stop reading Yonhap.