Amanda Knox reconvicted of slander in Italy for accusing innocent man in roommate’s 2007 murder

FLORENCE, Italy (AP) — An Italian courtroom reconvicted Amanda Knox of slander Wednesday, quashing her hope of eradicating a authorized stain towards her that has endured after her exoneration within the brutal 2007 homicide of her British roommate whereas the 2 have been trade college students in Italy.

The choice by a Florence appeals courtroom panel marked the sixth time that an Italian courtroom discovered Knox had wrongly blamed the killing on an harmless man, the Congolese proprietor of the bar the place she labored half time.

Knox has argued that her statements to police have been pressured throughout an intense night time of questioning that included bullying as she relied on her then-remedial Italian when she was a 20-year-old college pupil.

The panel of two judges and 6 jurors, nevertheless, confirmed the three-year sentence, which she already served throughout 4 years in Italian custody whereas the investigation and a number of trials ensued. The courtroom’s reasoning will probably be launched in 60 days.

Knox’s look Wednesday in Florence, in a bid to clear her identify “as soon as and for all,” was the primary time she had returned to an Italian courtroom since she was freed in 2011. Accompanied by her husband, Christopher Robinson, she confirmed no seen emotion as the decision was learn aloud.

However her lawyer, Carlo Dalla Vedova, mentioned shortly afterward that “Amanda may be very embittered.”

“We’re all very shocked on the end result of the choice,’’ Dalla Vedova mentioned exterior the courtroom. He added that Knox had anticipated an acquittal would put a cap on practically 17 years of judicial proceedings.

One other protection lawyer, Luca Luparia Donati, mentioned they anticipated to enchantment to Italy’s highest courtroom.

Knox’s new trial was set in movement after a European courtroom ruling that mentioned Italy violated her human rights throughout in a single day questioning days after Kercher’s homicide, disadvantaged of each a lawyer and a reliable translator.

Addressing the Florence courtroom in a gentle and typically breaking voice, Knox mentioned that she wrongly accused Patrick Lumumba below intense police stress.

“I’m very sorry that I used to be not robust sufficient to withstand the stress of police,″ Knox learn in Italian from a ready assertion, addressing the panel from the jury bench. She advised them: “I didn’t know who the assassin was. I had no approach 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 trade pupil from Seattle, and her new Italian boyfriend of only a week, Raffaele Sollecito.

Flip-flop verdicts over practically eight years of authorized proceedings polarized trial watchers on either side of the Atlantic because the case grew to become one of many first trials by social media, then in its infancy.

All these years later, the depth of media curiosity remained, with photographers massing round Knox, her husband and her authorized group as they entered the courthouse about an hour earlier than the listening to. A digicam knocked her on the left temple, her lawyer Luparia Donati mentioned. Knox’s husband examined a small bump on her temple as they sat within the entrance row of the courtroom.

Regardless of Knox’s exoneration and the conviction of an Ivorian man whose footprints and DNA have been discovered on the scene, doubts about her position endured, significantly in Italy. That’s largely as a result of accusation she made towards Lumumba.

Lumumba’s lawyer, Carlo Pacelli, advised reporters that the accusation branded him internationally, and his enterprise in Perugia floundered. He has since re-established himself in his spouse’s native Poland.

“Patrick has at all times been dutiful to all the courtroom selections, and all of the courts up till at present have affirmed that Amanda Knox was a slanderer,’’ Pacelli mentioned.

Knox is now a 36-year-old mom of two young children who advocates for felony justice reform and campaigns towards wrongful convictions. She was freed in October 2011, after 4 years in jail, by a Perugia appeals courtroom that overturned the preliminary responsible verdict within the homicide case towards each Knox and Sollecito.

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

Within the fall, Italy’s highest Cassation Courtroom threw out the slander conviction that had withstood 5 trials, ordering a brand new trial, due to 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 courtroom was 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 mentioned 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, nonetheless in a state of confusion.

“With reference to this ‘confession’ that I made final night time, I need to clarify that I’m very uncertain of the verity of my statements as a result of they have been made below the stress of stress, shock and excessive exhaustion,” she wrote.

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