Amanda Knox reconvicted in libel case

Amanda Knox was reconvicted on defamation charges by a Florence court years after she was acquitted of the 2007 murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher.

Knox will not go to jail because she was originally convicted of murder and has already served four years in prison.

At the time, she was also convicted of libel for blaming local pub owner Patrick Lumumba for the murder during a police interrogation, but that conviction was quashed last year and a retrial was ordered.

Knox’s lawyers said they expected to appeal the latest verdict.

They added that Amanda was disappointed as she had hoped to finally clear her name after years of legal battles.

She told the court on Wednesday that police forced her to implicate Mr Lumumba.

Knox, 36, said: “The police threatened me with 30 years in prison and one officer slapped me three times and said ‘remember, remember’.”

“I’m sorry that I was not strong enough to withstand the pressure of the police,” she added in Italian.

“I never wanted to slander Patrick. He was my friend and he looked out for me and comforted me in losing my friend (Meredith). I’m sorry that I couldn’t resist the pressure and made him suffer.”

Mr Lumumba was arrested in connection with the 2007 murder and spent two weeks in jail but was acquitted after a customer provided him with an alibi.

Still, his lawyer said the case affected his reputation and he was “known as the monster of Perugia”.

“He lost his job, his bar was sealed for several months and had to return to Poland because his wife is Polish,” his lawyer told reporters outside the court before the hearing.

Mr. Lumumba did not appear in court.

The hearing was held behind closed doors, and audio and video recordings were prohibited.

Knox was tried, convicted and later acquitted of the murder of Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old student from south London.

In 2007, Knox and Ms. Kercher were both language exchange students living in a house in the university town of Perugia.

Ms. Kercher, 21, was found dead in her home. Her throat was cut and she was sexually assaulted.

The trial attracted global media attention as prosecutors argued Ms Kercher was the victim of a drug-fueled sex game gone wrong.

In December 2009, Knox, her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and a third man, Rudy Guede, were convicted of murder and sexual violence and jailed . In 2011, Knox was convicted of defaming Mr Lumumba.

But that same year, a jury freed Knox and Sollecito on appeal after questioning their forensic evidence, and Knox returned to the United States after four years in prison.

The pair’s guilty verdicts were reinstated in 2014, but were eventually overturned in 2015.

Knox is now married with two young children and an activist for criminal justice reform. Five years ago, she returned to Italy to speak at a conference on wrongful convictions, where she On the pain of being judged by the media.

The subject of this trial is also 2016 Netflix DocumentaryKnox also published a memoir about her time in prison.

Mr. Sollecito has kept a low profile since his release. In 2017, he told the BBC The case left him heavily in debt.

Guede, a Perugia resident from Ivory Coast who was linked to the scene through DNA evidence, was the only person whose conviction for Ms Kercher’s murder was upheld. He was released in early 2021.