Italian court reconvicts Amanda Knox of slander

Amanda Knox was re-convicted of slander by an Italian court on Wednesday, maintaining the only guilty verdict remaining in connection to the tragic murder of her roommate in 2007.

The Florence court handed down a three-year sentence to Knox for defaming Patrick Lumumba, a Congolese bar owner, in a written statement after the killing of Meredith Kercher.

Despite the sentence, it is unlikely that Knox will serve any additional time as she had already spent approximately four years behind bars before her murder conviction was overturned.

In 2019, the European Court of Human Rights determined that Italian law enforcement had violated Knox’s rights during questioning, resulting in Italy overturning her slander conviction.

Subsequently, the country’s supreme court instructed the Florence court to initiate a new trial to determine if there was indeed slander in the note.

On Wednesday morning, Knox appeared in the Florence court for her hearing scheduled for 9:30 a.m. local time. Accompanied by her husband, Christopher Robinson, and their two children, Knox delivered a roughly 10-minute statement to the court.

Speaking in Italian with occasional tremors in her voice, she explained the reasons behind writing the note that implicated Lumumba.

During a press conference, Knox stated that she had no intention of causing harm to him. He was not just her boss but also a close friend who supported her during a difficult time after her roommate’s passing.

Exhausted and disoriented during a lengthy police questioning, she mentioned his name. Knox revealed that the upcoming hearing would take place in the same courtroom where she was wrongly convicted before, expressing her determination to once more defend herself.

Knox expressed her desire to finally clear her name from the false accusations through a post on social media, seeking good luck from her followers.

Following their initial conviction for murder in 2009, Knox and her then-boyfriend Sollecito were later acquitted in 2011.

However, they faced another conviction in 2014 before being definitively acquitted by Italy’s highest court in 2015. In a recent social media update, Knox included the Italian idiom Crepi il lupo! which roughly translates to May the wolf die, commonly used as a way of wishing someone good luck.