Italy court upholds Knox murder case slander conviction
FILE – Amanda Knox arrives flanked by her husband Christopher Robinson, right, at the Florence courtroom in Florence, Italy, Wednesday, June 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni, File)
ROME, Italy — Italy’s highest court on Thursday upheld a slander conviction for Amanda Knox linked to the 2007 murder for which she was jailed and then sensationally acquitted.
During police questioning over the brutal murder of her British flatmate, Meredith Kercher, US then-student Knox had blamed an innocent man, local bar owner Patrick Lumumba.
Knox and her Italian then-boyfriend were later convicted of the killing, only to be acquitted, found guilty again and then definitively acquitted in 2015.
Knox, now 37 and living in the United States, was first convicted of slandering Lumumba more than a decade ago.
Italy’s highest court overturned that verdict on appeal in 2023 and ordered a retrial in Florence.
Last June, Knox was again convicted of slandering Lumumba, and sentenced to three years in jail already served.
Lumumba told reporters Thursday he was “very satisfied” at the decision to uphold her conviction.
“Because Amanda was wrong, and this sentence must be with her for life,” he said.
After being implicated by Knox, Lumumba spent almost two weeks behind bars before being released without charge.
‘Unfair’
Ahead of the hearing, his lawyer Carlo Pacelli said his client had “suffered devastating moral and economic damages,” adding that Knox had “demonstrated a total absence of pity and remorse.”
Knox had attended the retrial verdict in Florence last year, but was not in Rome for Thursday’s proceedings.
Her lawyer Luca Luparia Donati said the decision to uphold her conviction was “totally unexpected” and “unfair for Amanda.”
The half-naked body of Kercher, 21, was found in a pool of blood inside the cottage in Perugia she shared with Knox in November 2007.
Knox’s murder trial attracted global interest, much of it salacious, but Italy’s highest court ruled there had been “major flaws” in the police investigation.
In 2019, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Knox had not been provided with adequate legal representation or a professional interpreter during her interrogation by police, saying her treatment “compromised the fairness of the proceedings as a whole.”
One person remains convicted of Kercher’s murder — Ivorian Rudy Guede, who was linked to the scene by DNA evidence.
He was sentenced in 2008 to 30 years for murder and sexual assault. His sentence was later reduced on appeal to 16 years.
Guede was released early in November 2021.
