Amanda Knox weeps in Italian court as she is re-convicted of slander over Meredith Kercher murder case

Amanda Knox has been re-convicted of slander in an Italian court docket after accusing an harmless man of the homicide of her roommate in 2007.

Knox – who was jailed for the homicide earlier than being exonerated – arrived on the Florence court docket on Wednesday in an try to overturn a conviction for slander within the final excellent case in opposition to her.

The 36-year-old spent 4 years in jail for the homicide of her flatmate Meredith Kercher, whereas the 2 had been change college students, earlier than her conviction was later annulled in 2015.

She appeared in court docket on Wednesday for a retrial for a distinct side of the case – falsely accusing a Congolese bar proprietor named Patrick Lumumba of the crime – and was discovered by the court docket to have wrongly accused him.

Nonetheless, Knox won’t serve any extra time in jail, because the three-year sentence she was initially given within the slander case was already coated by the point she beforehand served.

Knox gave the impression to be in tears whereas arriving, and was jostled – and apparently hit within the head by a digicam – by members of the media who mobbed her as she entered the Italian courtroom for the primary time in over a decade.

But, by the point the decision was learn aloud, she confirmed no seen emotion.

Her lawyer, Carlo della Vedova, mentioned shortly afterwards, that “Amanda could be very embittered.”

Kercher was discovered stabbed to dying on 2 November 2007, in her locked bed room in an residence she shared with Knox and two different roommates.

Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, had been convicted of her homicide however had been ultimately cleared after a high court docket in Italy annulled the convictions in 2015.

One other man, Rudy Guede, whose DNA and footprints had been discovered on the scene, was convicted in Kercher’s homicide in 2008 and was launched in 2021 after serving 13 years in jail.

Earlier within the newest listening to, Knox accused the Italian police of threats and violence, claiming that police needed her guilty Mr Lumumba.

“The police threatened me with 30 years in jail, an officer slapped me thrice saying ‘Keep in mind, bear in mind,’” Knox instructed the court docket.

“I’m very sorry that I wasn’t sturdy sufficient to face up to the strain from the police,” she added.

“I didn’t know who the assassin was. I had no strategy to know,” she instructed the eight-judge panel and jury members.

Earlier than Knox appeared in court docket, she wrote on X/Twitter on Monday that “On June fifth, I’ll stroll into the exact same courtroom the place I used to be re-convicted of against the law I didn’t commit, this time to defend myself but once more.”

“I hope to clear my identify as soon as and for the entire false expenses in opposition to me. Want me luck. Crepi il lupo!” she wrote, utilizing an Italian phrase just like the English “break a leg”.

Knox, from Seattle, had just lately arrived in Perugia, Italy in 2007 when she endured an extended night time of questioning over the homicide, regardless of having solely rudimentary Italian language abilities.

In 2019, the European Courtroom of Human Rights dominated that there had been procedural errors throughout the questioning and Italy’s high court docket final 12 months ordered a brand new trial within the slander case.

Italy’s highest court docket threw out a slander conviction within the fall of 2023, which carried a three-year sentence.

The persevering with saga of the homicide case has captured headlines for years and has been become books and films because the case unfolded.

Knox’s 2007 accusation in opposition to Mr Lumumba, whose bar she labored at on the time, appeared in statements typed by police that she signed, however which have been dominated inadmissible within the new trial by Italy’s highest court docket.

She recanted the accusation in a four-page handwritten word in English penned the next afternoon – the one proof the court docket can rule on. Regardless of her makes an attempt at strolling again the accusation, Mr Lumumba was picked up for questioning and held in jail for practically two weeks.

This time round, the court docket was ordered to ignore two damaging statements typed up by police and signed by Knox throughout the 2007 questioning, wherein she mentioned she remembered listening to Kercher scream and pointed towards Mr Lumumba for the homicide – the statements that she mentioned she was “uncertain” of the next day because of them being made underneath “strain of stress, shock and excessive exhaustion”.