Italian Court Re-Convicts Amanda Knox of Slander Over Kercher Murder, Leaving Her in Tears
DEBARYLIFE – Amanda Knox was found guilty again of defamation by an Italian court after she named an innocent man as her roommate’s killer in 2007.
To reverse a defamation conviction in the final case pending against her, Knox, who was imprisoned for the murder before being cleared, appeared in court in Florence on Wednesday.
Before her conviction was overturned in 2015, the 36-year-old was incarcerated for four years for the murder of Meredith Kercher, her roommate during their time as exchange students.
She went to court on Wednesday for a retrial on a different part of the case, falsely charging Patrick Lumumba, the proprietor of a Congolese pub, with the crime. The judge determined that her accusations against Lumumba were incorrect.
But Knox won’t be spending any additional time behind bars because her three-year term from the defamation case was already served when she was first sentenced.
As Knox entered the Italian courthouse for the first time in almost ten years, she was hounded by media members and appeared to be in tears. She was also reportedly struck in the head by a camera.
She didn’t appear to be upset, though, when the decision was announced.
Shortly after, Carlo Della Vedova, her attorney, stated that Amanda “is very embittered.”
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In the apartment she shared with Knox and two other roommates, Kercher was discovered fatally murdered in her locked bedroom on November 2, 2007.
Knox and her lover at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, were found guilty of her murder but were later exonerated after an Italian high court overturned the verdicts in 2015.
After serving 13 years in prison for the 2008 murder of Kercher, Rudy Guede—a different guy whose DNA and footprints were discovered at the scene—was freed in 2021.
Knox said that the Italian police had threatened and physically assaulted her earlier in the hearing, and that they were trying to get her to place the blame on Mr. Lumumba.
Knox testified in court, “The police slapped me three times and said, ‘Remember, remember.’ An officer threatened me with thirty years in prison.”
“I apologize deeply for not having the strength to resist the police’s intimidation,” she continued.
“I had no idea who the killer was.” She informed the jury and the eight judges, “I had no way to know.”
Knox posted on X/Twitter on Monday before going to court, saying, “On June 5th, I will walk into the very same courtroom where I was re-convicted of a crime I didn’t commit, this time to defend myself yet again.”
“My goal is to permanently erase my record of the unfounded accusations leveled against me. Good fortune to me. Crappi il lupo! Using an Italian expression akin to the English expression “break a leg,” she wrote.
Even though Knox only knew a few words of Italian, she had just moved to Perugia, Italy in 2007 and had to suffer a lengthy night of interrogation over the murder. Knox was from Seattle.
A fresh trial in the defamation case was ordered by Italy’s top court last year, and in 2019 the European Court of Human Rights declared that procedural errors had occurred during the questioning.
In the fall of 2023, a three-year sentence for slander was overturned by Italy’s top court.
As the case developed, the ongoing narrative of the murder case made headlines for years and was adapted into films and novels.
Knox’s 2007 charges against Mr. Lumumba, the bar owner she worked at the time, were typed by police and signed by her; nevertheless, the highest court in Italy declared the statements inadmissible in the new trial.
The only document the court can consider is a four-page handwritten memo she wrote the following afternoon in which she refuted the accusation. Mr. Lumumba was taken into custody and detained for almost two weeks, despite her efforts to retract the claim.
This time, the court was told to ignore two damaging statements that Knox signed and had police typed up. The statements stated that Knox had heard Kercher scream and pointed to Mr. Lumumba as the murderer; she said she was “doubtful” about the statements made the day before because they were made under “pressure of stress, shock, and extreme exhaustion.”