1 of 3 | An Italian court Wednesday reconvicted Amanda Knox of slander related to the 2007 murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher. File Photo by Claudio Giovannini/EPA-EFE
An Italian court Wednesday reconvicted Amanda Knox for slander after she accused an innocent man in the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher in 2007.
A lawyer for Knox told NBC News he was “very surprised at the outcome of the decision and Amanda is very upset.” Advertisement
Knox cried upon hearing the verdict, but will not serve the sentence of three years in prison due to the four years she already served in her original murder conviction.
Knox and her boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, were originally convicted of Kercher’s murder along with Rudy Guede in 2009.
The murder convictions against Knox and Sollecito were overturned in 2011 but later reinstated in 2014 before being overturned the following year.
The slander conviction handed down in 2011 was the only one that remained.
The Italian Supreme Court ordered a retrial in the slander case after its code of criminal procedure was changed in 2022.
Knox wanted the slander conviction reversed after the European Court of Human Rights ruled her rights during police questioning were violated. Advertisement
The slander case arose because the court found she had accused Patrick Lumumba of having a role in the murder when he did not.
In the slander case retrial, Knox testified police conducted a “nightmare” interrogation after the murder.
“When I couldn’t remember the details, one of the officers gave me a little smack on the head and shouted, ‘remember, remember,'” Knox said. “And then I put together a jumble of memories and the police made me sign a statement. I was forced to submit. It had been a violation of my rights.”
Lumumba’s lawyer told reporters that he “lost his job, had his bar seized for months, and had to return to Poland, because his wife was Polish.”
“I never wanted to slander Patrick. He was my friend, he took care of me and consoled me for the loss of my friend (Meredith). I’m sorry I wasn’t able to resist the pressure and that he suffered,” Knox testified.
She said under police questioning she was threatened with 30 years in prison.
Guede’s conviction was the only one that was upheld and he was ultimately released from prison in 2021.
