WHEN THE PROSECUTION RESTED its case, the lawyers for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito had a choice to make. They could either work at cross-purposes, each group to save its own client, or the lawyers could stay united and risk a joint conviction. Thanks to his father’s money and powerful connections, Raffaele had the more experienced defense team. His lead lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno, was easily the most powerful person in the courtroom, and Amanda’s attorneys never waivered from their strategy to ride her coattails. Bongiorno is a small, birdlike woman who pecks at her sandwich and takes quick sips of her coffee during the lunch breaks. Her head darts back and forth as she speaks, and her eyes seem to look everywhere at once. But she is a powerhouse. A prominent member of parliament for the Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s own party, she is a household name in Italy—a sort of Italian Johnnie Cochran often involved in the flashiest legal cases.
