Amanda Knox re-convicted of slander in Italy over accusations in roommate’s murder

Up to date June 05, 2024 at 06:46 AM ET

FLORENCE, Italy — An Italian court docket re-convicted Amanda Knox of slander on Wednesday, even after she was exonerated within the brutal 2007 homicide of her British roommate whereas the 2 had been change college students in Italy.

The court docket discovered that Knox had wrongly accused an harmless man, the Congolese proprietor of the bar the place she labored half time, of the killing. However she won’t serve any extra jail time, given the three-year sentence counts as time already served.

Knox confirmed no seen emotion as the decision was learn aloud.

Earlier Wednesday, in a mushy and generally breaking voice, Knox requested eight Italian judges and jury members to clear her of a slander cost that caught even after she was exonerated within the brutal 2007 homicide of her British roommate whereas the 2 had been change college students in Italy.

Knox instructed the court docket that she wrongly accused an harmless man, the Congolese proprietor of the bar the place she labored half time, of the killing underneath intense police stress in in a single day questioning with out the good thing about a lawyer or competent translator.

“I’m very sorry that I used to be not robust sufficient to withstand the stress of police,” Knox instructed the panel in a 9-minute ready assertion, sitting alongside them on the jury bench. She instructed them: “I did not know who the assassin was. I had no method to know.”

The slaying of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher within the idyllic hilltop city of Perugia fueled international headlines as suspicion fell on Knox, a 20-year-old change pupil from Seattle, and her new Italian boyfriend of only a week, Raffaele Sollecito.

Flip-flop verdicts over almost eight years of authorized proceedings polarized trial watchers on each side of the Atlantic because the case was vociferously argued on social media, nonetheless in its infancy.

The case continues to attract intense media consideration, with photographers massing round Knox, her husband Christopher Robinson and their authorized staff as they entered the courtroom about an hour earlier than the listening to. A digital camera knocked her on the left temple, her lawyer Luca Luparia Donati stated. Knox’s husband examined a small bump on her head as they sat within the entrance row of the court docket.

Regardless of Knox’s exoneration and the conviction of an Ivorian man whose footprints and DNA had been discovered on the scene, doubts about her position persist, significantly in Italy. That’s largely as a result of accusation she made in opposition to Patrick Lumumba, an accusation that led to the slander conviction.

Knox, now a 36-year-old mom of two babies, returned to Italy for under the second time since she was freed in October 2011, after 4 years in jail, by a Perugia appeals court docket that overturned the preliminary responsible verdict within the homicide case in opposition to each Knox and Sollecito.

She remained in the US by way of two extra flip-flop verdicts earlier than Italy’s highest court docket definitively exonerated the pair of the homicide in March 2015, stating flatly that that they had not dedicated the crime.

“I’ll stroll into the exact same courtroom the place I used to be reconvicted of against the law I did not commit, this time to defend myself but once more,” Knox wrote on social media. “I hope to clear my title as soon as and for all the false expenses in opposition to me. Want me luck.”

Knox’s day in court docket was set by a European court docket ruling that Italy violated her human rights throughout a protracted night time of questioning days after Kercher’s homicide, disadvantaged of each a lawyer and a reliable translator. Within the fall, Italy’s highest Cassation Courtroom threw out the slander conviction that had withstood 5 trials, ordering a brand new trial, because of a 2022 Italian judicial reform permitting circumstances which have reached a definitive verdict to be reopened if human rights violations are discovered.

This time, the court docket has been ordered to ignore two damaging statements typed by police and signed by Knox at 1:45 a.m. and 5:45 a.m. as she was held for questioning in a single day into the small hours of Nov. 6, 2007. Within the statements, Knox stated she remembered listening to Kercher scream, and pointed to Lumumba for the killing.

Hours later, nonetheless in custody at about 1 p.m., she requested for pen and paper and wrote her personal assertion in English, questioning the model that she had signed.