Reporter's Notebook  
 
ATHENS – When you touch down in Athens, the signs of an economic slump are immediately evident. The arrivals hall in the domestic terminal is almost deserted, with flights within Greece having been cut back by about 25 percent. Outside the taxi pick-up point stretches a long line of yellow cabs going nowhere. It is symbolic of Greece's economy – stretched and stuck.

On the ride into town the driver explains that he's been waiting for me for seven hours. I was his second and last fare of the day.

Greece still holds the magic of an ancient Mediterranean country. The Acropolis, its columns lit majestically at night, juts grandly above Athens. It is a testament to one of the world's great civilizations.

But down here on the street, there is fear that Greece is unraveling as a modern state.

---

‘Economic death spiral’
You don't expect to see so many hungry people in a major European city. They line up each day looking for a handout in the soup kitchens and bread lines run by the municipality. But the 40 workers under contract to prepare a basic lunch of pasta and bread say they will lose their jobs in June because the city has run out of money to pay them.

Essentially, the country is broke. And to borrow enough money to stay solvent, the Greek government has agreed to severe austerity measures imposed by the European Union, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The money will run out next month unless another chunk of the bailout is handed over. But the European Union wants even more cuts in government job, salaries and benefits.

Public employees have already taken a 40 percent pay cut and pensions are being reduced. The private sector has also been hit and unemployment is nearing 20 percent. A staggering 40 percent of youths between the ages of 18 and 24 are without jobs.

Take, for instance, Leo, a 64-year-old painter of religious icons for devout Greeks and tourists. His business dried up. The money ran out and he ended up living on the street. Evicted for not paying rent, Leo, who didn’t give his last name, took warm clothes, books and ten boiled eggs to his new home – a metal bench near a park in central Athens. He spent 45 days in the open with what he called the “unhappy homeless.” 

What makes Leo unhappy is the realization that the government is to blame. "They borrowed," he said. "Every time they needed money they borrowed and then borrowed some more."

Successive Greek governments borrowed an estimated $498 billion, in essence to bribe the Greek people into being happy. Governments who could offer cushy office jobs, fat pensions and long vacations got re-elected. It made perfect political sense, but it was economic suicide.

A businessman in the aviation industry described the country, "as gripped in an economic death spiral."

Enough to make you sick
Yiannis Varoufakis, a professor of economics at Athens University was just as blunt when he told me, “This is Greece's Great Depression. If you look at the statistics it is indeed a deeper slump than what Greece went through in the 1930s.”

Imagine for a moment taking a 40 percent pay cut. Then suffer an increase in sales tax to 23 percent. Add on increased rates for electricity, a new tax on heating oil and the cost of a gallon of gas hitting almost $10. Oh and your pension is not secure, and your kids stay home because there aren't enough teachers. It is enough to make you sick.
 
And that's precisely what the Greeks are doing. Getting ill. Hospital admissions are up 25 percent. At the same time hospital budgets have been cut 40 percent so there are shortages of medicine and staff.

Nikitas Kanekis is the director of Doctors of the World, a charity that runs health clinics. He has the genteel manner necessary to be a pediatric dentist, but the economic decline has unsettled him. "We have seen four times the number of Greek patients over the last year,” he said. “We are afraid the humanitarian crisis can develop into a humanitarian catastrophe."

It may already be happening. The department of health reports that suicides are up 40 percent. And violent crimes including murder are up almost 100 percent.  “We have all the characteristics we see in big cities in the Third World,” said  Kanekis. “People with no shelter, starving people and people looking for doctors and medicine."

Fears about what may come next
Greek coalition leaders are meeting Wednesday to prepare their response to a draft deal on steep cutbacks demanded by creditors in return for a $170 billion bailout that could protect the country from looming bankruptcy.

They need the money to stave off crunch time on March 20 when a big bond redemption payment is due. Without the bailout, they risk a default that could send shockwaves throughout financial markets and the global economy.

No one is certain it will happen. To receive the previous handout, Greece promised to cut 30,000 public-sector workers, but only 1,000 have been let go. The government also promised to sell off 65 billion euros in state owned assets. So far only 2 billion have been sold.

The government is trying to raise money through increased taxation. There's a new property tax that is collected through the state-owned electric company. If you don't pay the tax your electricity is cut off. There's a luxury tax to hit the wealthy – a 30 percent tax on sports cars and yachts. There's even a tax on private swimming pools. The government is reportedly using Google earth to pinpoint pools even as some Greeks are said to be using camouflage nets to hide them.

Even the Greek Orthodox Archbishop Hieronymos II of Athens and All Greece, who rarely comments on issues not related to the church, is worried.  “The unprecedented tolerance of the Greek people is being exhausted, rage pushes fear aside and the danger of social upheaval cannot be ignored anymore,” he warned in a letter sent to interim Greek prime minister.   

The origin of the words tragedy and economy are Greek. In this crisis, they are too close to home.

 By Keith Miller, NBC News Correspondent
 
PERUGIA, Italy – The conclusion to Italy's most sensational trial of international scope is just hours away. The tension in this hilltop Umbrian town can be felt in the coffee bars and out on the cobble stone piazzas. It is all everybody is talking about.

Will Amanda Knox walk or spend the rest of her life locked up in the nearby prison?

An eight-member jury is charged with deciding if Knox and her co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito’s 2009 convictions for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher should stand, be dismissed or altered.
 
Alex Guttieres says it can go either way. "It is a jury and they are unpredictable," said the American born lawyer with offices in Rome and Miami. Guttieres’ client list is mostly Americans in trouble in Italy. 

This is a different system than what defendants can expect in America, he said, explaining that back home Americans have the advantage of having to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Not so in Italy.

Guttieres spent a day last week in the underground bunker that passes as a courtroom in Perugia. He came away impressed by Knox's defense team, who he believes raised enough of a reasonable doubt to win Knox's freedom in an American courtroom, but he shied away from predicting the outcome of this case.

---

Almost no mention of Sollecito
What has been peculiar in these closing days of the trial is the focus on Knox. Prosecutors, along with the lawyers in the civil cases lodged against her, have painted a dark and disturbing portrait of a young woman with a sinister interior smartly masked by her all-American good looks.

But alarmingly, there has been almost no mention of her co-defendant Sollecito who is also appealing his conviction for murder and violent sexual assault. Throughout the appeal, he has sat across from Knox, mostly stone-faced. He has put on weight in prison and appears bulked up. The long hair seen on his arrest photos is now gone, replaced by a buzz cut.
 
Still the prosecution hardly ever mentions him. No character assassination in the closing arguments. No attempt by the prosecution to paint his allegedly diabolical participation in the alleged sex game that turned murderous. If he held the victim  Kercher down, as the prosecution contends, while Knox did the knife work, what did he get out of this supposedly dark act?
 
Like Knox there is no evidence linking Sollecito to the scene of the murder.
 
It is one of the mysteries hanging over the appeal trial.

‘I am innocent’
On Monday both Knox and Sollecito had one final opportunity to plead their innocence to members of the jury before they went to deliberate their case. 
 
Knox, who had been preparing for this day for months, spoke in Italian to the eight members of the jury. “I haven't murdered, raped, stolen. I was not there. I was not present at that crime,” she told the packed courtroom.

She said that she had tragically lost a friend and hoped for justice for her and her family, but insisted that she was not responsible for the murder.

“I want to go back home. I want to go back to my life. I don't want to be punished, to have my life, my future taken away from me for things I have not committed. Because I am innocent, Raphael is innocent,” Knox said.

Sollecito, 27, also told the jury he has never harmed anyone and said the charges against him are “totally untrue.”

If not Knox & Sollecito, who?
In her book, “The Fatal Gift of Beauty, The Trials of Amanda Knox,” author Nina Burleigh concluded that the police and prosecutors rushed to judgment and closed the investigation prematurely. She believes  the state simply lacks the evidence to convict Knox.
 
It may explain why in the closing arguments the prosecution attacked Knox's character. The evidence had already been discredited by the court appointed forensic experts who called crucial evidence unreliable. So if not Knox who?
 
Did Rudy Guede, the African drifter who was convicted of Kercher's murder in a fast track trial act alone? The most popular theory in Perugia is that the murder was the result of a robbery gone wrong – that Guede, perhaps high on drugs, was surprised by Kercher's sudden return home and lashed out. His DNA was found all over the murder scene. His bloody handprint was lifted from the headboard and clothes dresser in the bedroom where Kercher was brutally murdered.

Knox and Sollecito’s defense lawyers have maintained that Guede was the sole killer, but prosecutors insist he couldn’t have acted alone. For his part, Guede has maintained his innocence, but admits that he was in the house on the night of the murder.

Italian judicial system on trial                                                                                             
Knox is the only female American locked up in an Italian prison for murder. On Monday she will learn along with the rest of us if she's free to return to her hometown of Seattle or if she will be spending the rest of her life in prison.
 
The verdict will also have far reaching consequences for the police and prosecutors. The trial and subsequent appeal has cost the state millions of dollars.

The very credibility of Italy's judicial system is on the line. As one court room wag put it, “If Knox walks, half a dozen officers from the crime squad will be reduced to directing traffic.”
 

By Keith Miller, NBC News Correspondent

PERUGIA, Italy – You reach the ancient hill top town of Perugia by a series of winding roads through the rolling hills of Umbria, traveling past huge poplar trees planted like giant windbreaks. To call it picture-perfect would be an injustice. This is what every American exchange student probably imagines Italy to be like.
 
The favorable impression is reinforced by the warm-colored and weathered stones that make up the walls surrounding the town.
 
But those walls also envelop a place where history has on many occasions been cruel. And its modern judicial system is giving those ancient injustices a new twist, embodied in the form of American student Amanda Knox, who has done even more to put Perugia on the map than the local chocolate factory, Perugina, known for its silver wrapped “Baci” (kisses). 
 
There is little affection here for Knox, who has created a far greater stir than the annual international chocolate festival.
 
Portrayed in the Italian press as a spoiled and sexually promiscuous man eater, Knox, her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede, an Ivorian resident of Perugia, were convicted and jailed in 2009 for the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a British student and Knox’s roommate. Judges concluded that the killing came during a frenzied sex game that spiraled out of control.
 
People often ask if I think Knox is guilty of the murder she was convicted of committing. After three years of reporting on the crime, Knox’s trial and her punishment for the TODAY show, the answer is always the same: "I don't know if she is guilty, but I do know that the prosecution didn't prove it in court."

---

Circus-like trial
You can put that down to the inordinately inept Italian court system. As I responded when a reputable Italian newspaper reporter recently asked me my opinion on the proceedings: “I would rather be on trial in Cuba."
 
Add to that a plethora of lawyers, often working at cross-purposes. In this case, four legal teams, representing four different parties, were all taking a swing at Knox. On a given day the prosecutors’ table during the trial was more crowded than a popular pizza parlor
There were lawyers for the state, the victim’s family, an attorney representing a man accusing Knox of slander and an attorney for the convicted murderer Guede. Each had his say, and what they mostly said was conjuncture punctuated by sexual innuendo that would make Mae West blush. 
 
And I must not leave out the chief prosecutor in the case, Giuliano Mignini, a great barrel of a man with a full head of gray hair swept back in the fashionable style of the Italian middle aged male. He cut a formidable figure in court. But as he was prosecuting Knox for murder, he himself was on trial in Florence for abuse of prosecutorial power in a previous murder trial.
 
As Knox was writing in her journal to pass the time in prison, Mignini was shuttling back and forth to Florence to defend himself in court. He was found guilty and given a suspended sentence.
 
This blatant breech of ethics was greeted by silence in Perugia. Mignini carried on his prosecution of Knox with the zeal of an evangelical preacher.
 
A sex game gone wrong?
Throughout the case, this prosecution was all about sex. Mignini formed a motive for the murder of 21-year-old Kercher early and stayed with it till the end. It was, he said, "a satanic ritualistic sex orgy that led to murder."
 
The Italian and British tabloids went positively feverish. They went straight to Knox’s Facebook page, uncovering the lurid that supposedly simmered in the fresh-faced girl. And the nickname she was given at the age of 8, when she played a crafty game of soccer. “Foxy Knoxy” just about sealed her fate. 
 
On air I reduced the prosecution’s claim to "a sex game gone wrong." But at no time during the trial were there any facts presented to back up the claim.
 
Despite the complete lack of evidence to support his theory, Mignini conducted an imaginary dialogue between Knox and the victim as part of his closing arguments. Speaking for Knox, he imagined her saying to Kercher, "You’re behaving like a little saint. Now we will show you, now we will make you have sex."
 
The trial judge dismissing the sex game theory came up with his own motive suggesting Knox and her former boyfriend joined in attacking Kercher after they heard her screams as she was being molested by Guede. Not sex, but jealousy guided Knox, he said.
 
There was no evidence backing up this theory and no rationale, either. In the history of criminal prosecution, I doubt there is a single case where a person jumped at the chance to help a relatively unknown intruder in the dark of night, sexually assault and then stab a roommate to death. Never mind that the testimony delivered in court painted the relationship between Knox and Kercher as friendly.
 
So the trial in the absence of a rational motive came down to the DNA
 
Imagine for a moment a murder scene in a cramped student’s bedroom. A body on the floor, blood everywhere. There were bloodied hand prints on the headboard, cupboard and bloody foot prints on the floor.
 
All connected back to the man first convicted of the crime: Rudy Guede. 

 
Holes in DNA evidence
There was not a single piece of DNA from Knox or her former boyfriend found at the crime scene. The prosecution claimed they cleaned up any trace of being there, but were clever enough to leave behind the clues leading to Guede.
 
Two 20-somethings, admittedly stoned from marijuana, buzzed from too much booze and in the grip of a supposed sadistic sexual fever decided, "Oh dear, let's mop up the blood, extract the hairs and wipe away any bodily fluids before we make our getaway."
 
I don't buy it. Never did.
 
Then this week the prosecution’s case took a hit.
 
Independent forensic experts appointed by the court took the stand on Monday and attacked key pieces of the evidence used to convict them.  
 
The two court-appointed experts presented findings from a 145-page report they wrote after studying the DNA evidence.
 
The experts testified that a series of police blunders like not wearing protective caps and masks and allowing people to tramp in and out of the crime scene contaminated potential DNA evidence. 
 
They also raised questions about evidence concerning the murder weapon, a large, black-handled kitchen knife found at Knox's boyfriend’s apartment. Prosecutors had insisted that Knox’s DNA was found on the handle of the knife and that Kercher’s DNA material was found on the blade. The forensic experts testified Knox’s DNA was found on the handle of the knife, but said there was no DNA from the victim.
 
Another crucial piece of evidence – a bloody bra clasp belonging to the victim that allegedly had DNA from Knox's  boyfriend on it – was so badly handled that it was impossible to test, according to the forensic experts.

Stay tuned… 
Knox's mother Edda Mellas, a school teacher from Seattle, was in tears at the conclusion of testimony. The legal fees and cost of maintaining a transatlantic connection to her daughter has nearly bankrupted the family, but they stand by Knox's insistence that she is innocent.
 
Appealing a murder conviction in Italy can be tricky. The judge could impose an even harsher sentence, but Knox has two things going for her. When the appeals judge agreed to examine the evidence presented in the first trial, it was an admission that the evidence could be flawed.
 
It wouldn't be the first time. Around 50 percent of appeals in major criminal cases in Italy end with the conviction being over turned.
 
The next hearing is scheduled for Saturday when the experts face cross-examination. Stay tuned….