Amanda Knox gets one final shot at clearing her name of slander in Italy’s top court.
Amanda Knox is presented with a final opportunity to exonerate herself from the last remnant of criminal allegations as Italy’s highest court is set to hear her appeal on Thursday regarding a slander conviction.
This conviction stems from her false accusation against a Congolese bar owner in connection with the 2007 murder of her British flatmate. The man she wrongfully accused, Patrick Lumumba, expressed to reporters outside Italy’s Cassation Court that he hopes the conviction remains intact and “stays with her for the rest of her life.”
During a two-hour hearing, both parties articulated their arguments, with the high court expected to commence deliberations later on Thursday. However, it remains uncertain when a verdict will be rendered. This ruling is anticipated to conclude a dramatic 17-year legal journey that involved Knox and her former Italian boyfriend being convicted and acquitted in alternating verdicts concerning the brutal murder of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher, before ultimately being exonerated by the highest Cassation Court in 2015.
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The slander conviction against Knox has persisted through numerous appeals, and she was reconvicted in June following a European court ruling that determined Italy had violated her human rights, thereby allowing for a retrial. Knox is monitoring the verdict from her home, “confident and respectful of the justice system as she always has been. She is confident that this story will end today,” stated her defense attorney Carlo Dalla Vedova to reporters. In a recent episode of her “Labyrinths” podcast, Knox remarked, “I hate the fact that I have to live with the consequences of a crime I did not commit.”
Her defense team contends that she accused Lumumba, who was her employer at a bar in the central Italian university town of Perugia, during an extended interrogation under duress from the police, who allegedly provided her with misleading information. The European Court of Human Rights determined that the police had denied her access to legal counsel and supplied a translator who functioned more as a mediator than an advocate.
“I’ve been having nightmares about getting a bad verdict and just living the rest of my life with a shadow hanging over me. It’s like a scarlet letter,’’ Knox said on her podcast.
Even if the Supreme Court affirms the conviction and the three-year sentence, Knox will not face any additional time in prison. She has already spent nearly four years incarcerated during the investigation, the initial murder trial, and the first appeal. Knox has expressed that her primary goal is to exonerate herself from all criminal allegations.
“Living with a false conviction is horrific, personally, psychologically, emotionally,” she stated during the podcast. “I’m fighting it, and we’ll see what happens.” Knox returned to the United States in 2011 after being released by an appeals court in Perugia and has since become a prominent advocate for those wrongfully convicted. She co-hosts a podcast with her husband and is set to release a new memoir titled “Free: My Search for Meaning.”
In June, Knox traveled back to Italy for the verdict in the slander trial, during which her attorney, Dalla Vedova, remarked that she felt “very embittered” by the conviction. At the age of 20, Knox was a student in the central Italian university town of Perugia when Kercher was discovered stabbed to death on November 2, 2007, in their shared apartment with two Italian women. The case garnered international attention as suspicions quickly targeted Knox and her then-boyfriend, Rafaelle Sollecito. After eight years of legal proceedings, including two appeals to Italy’s highest court, both were fully exonerated of the murder in 2015.
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Rudy Hermann Guede, an individual from the Ivory Coast, was convicted of the murder after his DNA was found at the crime scene. He was released in 2021 after serving the majority of his 16-year sentence. The European Court mandated that Italy compensate Knox for police misconduct, highlighting her vulnerability as a foreign student with limited proficiency in Italian. Following this ruling, Italy’s Supreme Court ordered a new slander trial. It dismissed two signed statements prepared by police that falsely implicated Lumumba in the murder and instructed the appellate court to consider only a handwritten letter Knox later composed in English, which sought to retract the accusation.
The appellate court, in its deliberations, indicated that the four-page memorandum provided sufficient grounds for a slander determination. As a result of Knox's assertions, Lumumba was summoned for interrogation, even though he possessed a solid alibi. This situation adversely affected his business, leading him to relocate to Poland with his Polish spouse. Upon his arrival at court, he emphasized that Knox "has never offered an apology to me."
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