Amanda Knox re-convicted of slander after speaking out in Italian court
FLORENCE and LONDON -- An Italian court on Wednesday re-convicted Amanda Knox of slander, upholding the only conviction still standing in association with the brutal murder of her roommate in 2007.
The Florence court sentenced Knox to three years for slandering Patrick Lumumba, a Congolese bar owner, in a written statement following the murder of Meredith Kercher. Knox is not expected to serve the time, since she served about four years before her murder conviction was overturned.
The European Court of Human Rights had ruled in 2019 that Italian law enforcement violated Knox's rights during questioning, which led to Italy throwing out her slander conviction. The country's supreme court then asked the Florence court to begin a new trial to decide whether there had been slander in the note.
Knox arrived in court in Florence Wednesday morning, with her hearing set to begin at 9:30 a.m. local time. She was accompanied by her husband, Christopher Robinson, with whom she shares two children.
Knox made an about 10-minute declaration before the court. Speaking in Italian with a voice that at times trembled, she spoke of why she wrote the note naming Lumumba.
She said she didn't intend to hurt Lumumba, who was "not only her employer," but also a friend who consoled her after her roommate's death. She named him while she was exhausted and confused during an extensive police interrogation, she said.
The hearing had been scheduled for the "very same courtroom where I was reconvicted of a crime I didn't commit," Knox said on Monday. This time, she would be there to "defend myself yet again," she added.
"I hope to clear my name once and for all of the false charges against me," Knox said on social media. "Wish me luck."
Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were initially convicted of murder in 2009, a ruling that was overturned in 2011. She was again convicted of murder in 2014. The country's highest court definitively acquitted her and Sollecito of murder in 2015.
Rudy Hermann Guede was convicted and served 13 years for the murder. He was released in 2021.
On social media on Monday, Knox had added a short postscript to her statement, saying, "Crepi il lupo!" The Italian idiom roughly translates to "May the wolf die," a common way of saying "Good luck."
