Florence, Italy — Amanda KnoxAn American student who served nearly four years in an Italian prison after being convicted of murdering his college roommate Meredith Kercher in 2007 and then exonerated more than a decade later was re-convicted on libel charges Wednesday for falsely accusing the owner of the bar where he was working at the time of the killing.
Although a court in Florence ruled that Knox had wrongly accused an innocent Congolese man of Kercher’s murder, the American will not serve any further prison time in Italy because he has already served a new three-year sentence for the overturned murder conviction.
Knox showed little emotion when the verdict was read in court on Wednesday, but she was embraced by her husband in the courtroom after the verdict and they shared a brief embrace.
Antonio Calani/AP
The court said Knox must pay legal costs and damages to Patrick Lumumba, the owner of the bar where she was working part-time in Perugia at the time of Kercher’s murder, but the amount has yet to be determined.
Her lawyers have said she will appeal Wednesday’s ruling, asking for it to be heard within 45 days by Italy’s highest court, the Court of Cassation in Rome. The Court of Cassation only rules on whether lower court decisions follow legal procedure, not the substance of specific cases.
The Florence court was expected to publish its reasons for the decision within 60 days.
Knox is back in court this week hoping to clear the final legal stain on her reputation.
“I will be walking into the very courtroom where I was convicted again of a crime I did not commit, this time to once again defend myself,” Knox wrote on social media before returning to court on Monday. “I hope to clear my name once and for all from the false accusations made against me. Best of luck.”
British student Kercher was found dead in the bedroom of the apartment she shared with Knox in the Italian city of Perugia. She had been sexually assaulted and suffered multiple stab wounds. Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of murdering her after a sex game gone wrong.
AP
In 2015, after a seven-year legal battle and multiple rulings, Knox and Sollecito were acquitted of murder charges, but the defamation conviction against Knox stood: She made the accusations against Lumumba shortly after her arrest and during a grueling 53-hour police interrogation.
However, shortly after implicating the man, Knox wrote a four-page statement in English casting serious doubt on the account she had given to police.
“I want to be clear that I am very skeptical of its veracity. [sic] “My statements were made under pressure of stress, shock and extreme fatigue, so not only was I arrested and told I would be jailed for 30 years, I was also punched over the head for failing to recall the facts correctly,” she said in a statement.
Knox’s defense team has consistently argued that the charges against the bar owner were coerced.
Reuters
In 2019, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Italy had violated Knox’s human rights during her police interrogation. Knox claims she was interrogated without a lawyer or a proper interpreter, and that police beat her.
Italy’s highest court ordered a retrial and handed down its verdict against Knox on Wednesday.
The prosecution asked the court to uphold the defamation conviction and impose a three-year prison sentence, and their request was granted, but Knox has already spent about four years in prison since 2007, so she does not need to spend any more time in prison.
The other man, Rudy Guede The man, whose footprints and DNA were found throughout the crime scene, was convicted of Kercher’s murder in 2008 and served 13 years in prison before being released in 2021.
