Amanda Knox was reconvicted by an Italian court of slander in the final case related to the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher.
Knox, 36, originally was convicted in 2009 of slander for falsely accusing Patrick Lumumba of murdering Kercher. An appellate court in Florence, Italy, upheld that conviction on Wednesday, June 5, nearly two decades after Kercher’s 2007 murder.
According to CNN, Knox was visibly emotional and told the court she was “sorry” she did not try harder to retract the accusation.
“I did not know who the assassin was,” she said, adding that she was in an existential crisis when she accused Lumumba of being involved in Kercher’s death.
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Knox won’t be serving more jail time, however, given the four years she already spent behind bars following her wrongful imprisonment for Kercher’s murder
In 2007, Knox was accused of murdering her roommate Kercher while they were studying abroad in Perugia, Italy. Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison after she and then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were both convicted of the crime despite a lack of evidence.
An appellate court later found the former couple not guilty in 2011, but they were again found guilty three years later during a retrial. The Italian supreme court cleared Knox of Kercher’s murder in 2015 and she was exonerated.
Ivorian migrant Rudy Guede was sentenced in 2008 to 30 years for Kercher’s murder after his DNA was identified at the crime scene. His sentence was later reduced, and he was released from prison in November 2021.
During her interrogation in 2007, Knox, then 20, accused her then-boss Lumumba of the murder, which led to his arrest and two-week incarceration. Knox signed two statements prepared by police regarding this accusation before walking back the claims.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2023 that Knox’s rights were violated during the interrogation that ultimately led to her accusation against Lumumba. As a result, Italy’s supreme court ordered a retrial at the appellate court level.
Before a decision was made in Wednesday’s trial, Knox — who now shares two kids with husband Christopher Robin — said it was a “good thing” she was back on the stand again. Knox wrote via social media that she hoped to get a full acquittal from her “wrongful accusation of slander.”
