Amanda Knox returns to a familiar Italian courtroom, this time to face defamation charges.
The 36-year-old American will appear in court again on Wednesday for wrongly accusing a Congolese bar owner of murdering her roommate Meredith Kercher while the young women were exchange students in Italy. The case included multiple convictions and appeals, and immediately became a high-profile case that spread around the world.
“On June 5, I will walk into the same courtroom where I was once again convicted of a crime I did not commit, this time to defend myself again,” she wrote in a post on X on Monday.
“I hope to clear my name once and for all of the false accusations against me. Wish me luck.”
On June 5, I walk into the same courtroom where I was convicted again for a crime I did not commit, this time to defend myself again. I hope to clear my name once and for all of the false accusations against me. Wish me luck. Crepi il lupo!
— Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) June 3, 2024
Kercher’s body was found on November 2, 2007, with her throat slit, in her locked bedroom in an apartment she shared with Knox and two other roommates.
Knox, from Seattle, had recently arrived in Perugia, Italy, when she endured a long night of interrogation about the murder, despite having only rudimentary Italian language skills.
She eventually accused the owner of a bar where she worked part-time – Patrick Lumumba – of murdering the 21-year-old British student.
In 2016, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the interrogation violated her rights because she was questioned without a lawyer or official translator.
In November 2023, Italy’s highest court dismissed the defamation conviction – the only remaining guilty verdict against Knox after the same court finally handed down Kercher’s murder convictions against Knox, her and Sollecito nine years ago.
That conviction, which has endured multiple trials and appeals, has remained a legal stain against her, especially in Italy, as she pursues a new life in the US and campaigns for judicial reform.
Knox’s 2007 accusation against Lumumba appeared in police typed statements she signed, but which have been declared inadmissible in the retrial by Italy’s highest court.
She recanted the accusation in a four-page handwritten note in English, written the next afternoon – the only evidence the court can rule on. Despite her attempts to withdraw the charges, Lumumba was taken in for questioning and held in prison for almost two weeks.
The defamation conviction carried a three-year prison sentence, which Knox served during nearly four years of detention until an appeals court in Perugia found her and Sollecito innocent. After six years of flip-flop rulings, Knox was finally acquitted of the murder by Italy’s highest court in 2015.
Another man, Rudy Guede, was convicted of Kercher’s murder in 2008.
Guede, whose DNA and footprints were found at the scene, was convicted of the murder and sentenced to 16 years in prison.
He was released in 2021 after serving 13 years, and is currently under investigation for the alleged physical and sexual abuse of an ex-girlfriend since his release.
