Amanda Knox has been reconvicted of slandering a Congolese bar owner in a case related to the tragic 2007 murder of British tourist Meredith Kercher.
Knox, 36, returned to an Italian courtroom in tears today for the first time in more than twelve-and-a-half years to clear herself ‘once and for all’ of a slander charge that stuck even after she was exonerated in the brutal 2007 murder of her British roommate in the idyllic hilltop town of Perugia.
While Knox, originally from Seattle, was reconvicted for slandering Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba over a statement she gave to police, she will not face any more jail time, as the four years she served before the first acquittal covers the three-year slander sentence.
She reportedly wept as the verdict was read aloud in the court in Florence, Tuscany. Her lawyer, Carlo della Vedova, said shortly afterward that ‘Amanda is very embittered’, adding she plans to appeal the verdict.
During today’s hearing, Knox asked the eight Italian judges and civil jury members to clear her of the slander charge.
In a soft and sometimes breaking voice, Knox told the court that she wrongly accused Patrick Lumumba under intense police pressure, after she was questions for hours on end.
‘I am very sorry that I was not strong enough to resist the pressure of police,’ Knox told the panel in a 9-minute prepared statement, sitting alongside them on the jury bench.
Amanda Knox (pictured) returned to an Italian courtroom Wednesday for the first time in more than twelve-and-a-half years to clear her name
She has returned to Italy to clear her name over slander charge that she was found guilty of after making claims against a Congolese bar owner
Meredith Kercher (pictured) was tragically murdered in 2007
Knox initially accused the Congolese owner of a bar, Patrick Lumumba, (pictured) of killing Kercher
She told them: ‘I didn’t know who the murderer was. I had no way to know.’
She previously told the judge: ‘I never wanted to slander Patrick; he was my friend.’
But, Lumumba’s lawyers said today, the bar owner’s reputation suffered regardless of whether she knew who the murderer was.
‘When Patrick was accused by Amanda, he became known everywhere as the monster of Perugia,’ Lumumba’s lawyer Carlo Pacelli told reporters saying that the conviction should be upheld. Lumumba was not in court.
The slaying of 21-year-old British tourist Meredith Kercher fueled global headlines as suspicion fell on Knox, then a 20-year-old exchange student, and her new Italian boyfriend of just a week, Raffaele Sollecito.
And nearly two decades on, the world remains fascinated by the case.
So much so that as she tried to plough through the throng of reporters and camera people to get to the courthouse with her husband Christopher Robinson, 36, a camera smacked her temple, appearing to cause her pain.
Her lawyer, Carlo della Vedova (pictured, right), said shortly afterward that ‘Amanda is very embittered’, adding she plans to appeal the verdict.
Lumumba’s lawyer Carlo Pacelli (pictured) said today the bar owner’s reputation suffered regardless of whether she knew who the murderer was
Yesterday, Knox, now a 36-year-old mother of two small children, wrote on social media: ‘I will walk into the very same courtroom where I was reconvicted of a crime I didn´t commit, this time to defend myself yet again.’
She added: ‘I hope to clear my name once and for all of the false charges against me. Wish me luck.’
Flip-flop verdicts over nearly eight years of legal proceedings polarised trial watchers on both sides of the Atlantic as the case was heatedly argued on social media, still in its infancy.
Despite Knox’s exoneration and the conviction of an Ivorian man, Rudy Guede, whose footprints and DNA were found at the scene, doubts about her role persist years later, particularly in Italy.
Knox’s day in court was set by a European court ruling in 2019 that Italy violated her human rights during a long night of questioning days after Kercher’s murder, deprived of both a lawyer and a competent translator.
Last November, Italy’s highest Cassation Court threw out the slander conviction that had withstood five trials, ordering a new trial, thanks to a 2022 Italian judicial reform allowing cases that have reached a definitive verdict to be reopened if human rights violations are found.
Amanda Knox and her former lover Raffaele Sollecito (pictured, right) were pictured in June 2022 reuniting in Italy 15 years after they were arrested and wrongly convicted of the murder of Briton Meredith Kercher
Knox and Sollecito had only been dating for a short amount of time before Meredith’s death
Kercher was travelling in Italy at the time of her death
This time, the court has been ordered to disregard two damaging statements typed by police and signed by Knox at 1:45pm and 5:45pm as she was held for questioning overnight into the early hours of November 6, 2007.
In the statements, Knox said she remembered hearing Kercher scream, and pointed to Patrick Lumumba, the owner of a bar where she worked, for the killing.
Hours later, still in custody at about 1 pm, she asked for pen and paper and wrote her own statement in English, questioning the version that she had signed.
‘In regards to this ‘confession’ that I made last night, I want to make clear that I´m very doubtful of the verity of my statements because they were made under the pressure of stress, shock and extreme exhaustion,’ she wrote.
But despite Knox’s attempts at walking back the accusation, Lumumba was picked up for questioning and held in jail for almost two weeks after she said she had ‘covered her ears’ while he slit the throat of her flat mate.
Lumumba was only released after a Swiss university professor came forward with a till receipt proving the father-of-two was at work and not involved in the crime.
Speaking to Italian media last year, Patrick, who now lives in Krawkow, Poland, with his partner and children, stormed: ‘My life has literally been turned upside down.
‘Amanda knew very well that I was innocent, but those few words that she said to the police on the morning of November 6, 2007, ‘… he killed her’, destroyed me in a flash, eliminating the reputation I enjoyed in Perugia’.
Knox returned to Italy for only the second time since she was freed in October 2011, after four years in jail, by a Perugia appeals court that overturned the initial guilty verdict in the murder case against both Knox and Sollecito.
Knox and Sollecito were convicted in their first trial, but after a series of flip-flop verdicts, they were ultimately exonerated by Italy´s highest court in 2015.
Knox pictured leaving with penitentiary police after a court hearing in Perugia on September 16, 2008
Rudy Guedde (pictured) was convicted of killing Meredith Kercher
She is now the mother of two small children, and has a podcast with her husband while campaigning against wrongful convictions
Knox returned to the United States in October 2011, after her first acquittal.
She is now the mother of two small children, and has a podcast with her husband while campaigning against wrongful convictions.
However, the slander conviction against Knox endured, a legal stain that continued to fuel doubts about her role in the killing, particularly in Italy – despite the conviction of Rudy Hermann Guede in 2008, a man from Ivory Coast whose DNA and footprints were found at the crime scene.
The burglar was convicted of murdering Kercher and he was sentenced to 30 years behind bars.
Guede’s DNA was discovered on Kercher’s body despite his claims that he was in the bathroom listening to music when she was killed.
Her body was found in her bedroom, partially undressed, with 47 stab wounds.
Now 36, Guede was released from prison in 2021 after serving 13 years of a 16-year term handed down in a fast-track trial that foresees lighter sentences under Italian law.
Guede was recently ordered to wear a monitoring bracelet and not leave his home at night after an ex-girlfriend accused him of physical and sexual abuse – an investigation is ongoing.
More to follow.
