Amanda Knox re-convicted of slander in Italy over roommate’s 2007 killing
Amanda Knox was re-convicted of slander in an Italian court on Wednesday for wrongfully accusing an innocent man of killing her British roommate in 2007.
The court found that Knox had wrongly accused the Congolese owner of the bar where she worked part time, of the killing of Meredith Kercher, Knox’s 21-year-old roommate and fellow exchange student.
Knox will not serve any more time in jail for the three-year slander sentence since it counts as time already served. Knox previously served four years in jail before she was acquitted of murdering Kercher.
Knox showed no visible emotion as the verdict was read aloud, The Associated Press reported.
WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE LATEST TRIAL INVOLVING AMANDA KNOX
Amanda Knox arrived at an Italian court in Florence on the day of the verdict in the slander case on Wednesday. (Claudia Greco/Reuters)
Before the hearing, Knox had written on social media that she hoped to “clear my name once and for all of the false charges against me. Wish me luck.”
Knox, then a 20-year-old exchange student from Seattle, and her Italian boyfriend of just a week, Raffaele Sollecito, sparked headlines across the globe after both were suspected of playing a part in Kercher’s murder in the hilltop town of Perugia on Nov. 2, 2007.
Amanda Knox walks with her lawyer and husband, right, ahead of the verdict in the slander case in Florence, Italy, on Wednesday. (Claudia Greco/Reuters)
Despite the 2008 conviction of an Ivorian man whose DNA was found at the murder scene, it would take Knox and Sollecito another seven years to clear their names.
Knox and Sollecito were exonerated in 2015 when Italy’s highest court definitively threw out the convictions following two previous flip-flop verdicts.
Amanda Knox stands between her lawyer and husband ahead of the verdict in the slander case in Florence, Italy, on Wednesday. (Claudia Greco/Reuters)
In the fall, 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 arrives flanked by her husband Christopher Robinson, right, and her lawyer, Luca Luparia Donati at the Florence courtroom in Florence, Italy, on Wednesday. (Antonio Calanni/AP)
Knox is now a 36-year-old mother of two small children. She 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.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
