Despite being exonerated in the 2007 murder of her British roommate while they were exchange students in Italy, Amanda Knox was re-convicted of slander by an Italian court on Wednesday. The court found that Knox had wrongly accused an innocent man, the Congolese owner of the bar where she worked, of the killing. However, Knox will not serve any more jail time as the three-year sentence counts as time already served.
Knox, who had returned to Italy for only the second time since her release in 2011 to participate in the trial, showed no visible emotion as the verdict was read. Her lawyer, Carlo della Vedova, stated that “Amanda is very embittered.”
Before the hearing, Knox had expressed her hope on social media to “clear my name once and for all of the false charges against me. Wish me luck.” The murder of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher in Perugia garnered global attention as suspicion fell on Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.
The case was marked by flip-flop verdicts over nearly eight years of legal proceedings. Knox’s retrial was set following a European court ruling that Italy had violated her human rights during questioning days after the murder.
During the hearing, Knox asked the judges and jury members to clear her of the slander charge, admitting that she accused the wrong person under police pressure. Knox, now a 36-year-old mother of two, remains a controversial figure, especially in Italy due to her accusation against Lumumba.
Italy’s highest court overturned the initial guilty verdict in 2011 and definitively exonerated Knox and Sollecito in 2015. The Cassation Court later threw out the slander conviction, leading to a new trial based on a 2022 judicial reform.
This time, the court must disregard statements obtained during overnight questioning, as they were made under stress and exhaustion. Knox expressed doubt about the veracity of her statements in a letter she wrote later.
