(NewsWorthy.news) – An American woman who was previously exonerated in a murder case has been reconvicted of slander in an Italian court, lengthening her legal battles.
Amanda Knox was wrongly convicted of killing her British roommate in 2007, while both were studying in Italy as foreign exchange students. After spending four years in jail, she was exonerated in Meredith Kercher’s killing.
Even so, suspicion of her involvement remained for some, including the victim’s family and an innocent man whom Knox blamed for the crime. This false accusation landed her with a slander charge that, though lifted in November 2023 after a court determined Italian police had violated her rights to an attorney a competent translator during questioning in the days after the murder, was dealt in another conviction on Wednesday June 5.
The charge relates to Knox’s initial allegation that a Congolese bar owner and her employer at the time, Patrick Lumumba, killed Kercher. Knox later walked back her claims, saying that she pinned the blame on him due to pressure from police. This week’s reconviction is the sixth time Knox has been found liable for slander in Italian courts.
The decision was made by six jurors and two judges who agreed that Knox should be sentenced to three years in prison. However, that time was already served while she was incarcerated in Italy pending the investigation, trials, and subsequent exoneration of her involvement in Kercher’s death. The reasoning behind the court’s recent decision will be publicized in 60 days.
Following the ruling, Knox lamented her situation, saying she is “a victim” who has been “unjustly accused for 17 years” and vowed to appeal the ruling in court. In 2009, she and her boyfriend at the time, an Italian named Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted and sentenced to more than 20 years in jail. They were officially and fully exonerated by Italy’s highest court in 2015.
Knox was just 20 years old at the time of her conviction. Kercher, one of her three roommates at a rented flat in Perugia, was 21 when she was found stabbed to death in her bedroom.
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