Amanda Knox’s slander conviction upheld in Italian court

Amanda Knox, the young American woman who was eventually acquitted of the brutal 2007 murder of her British roommate, was re-convicted of slander for falsely naming her former boss as the person who killed Meredith Kercher.

Knox asked the eight Italian judges and jury members Wednesday to clear her of a slander charge but was found guilty again of wrongly accusing Diya “Patrick” Lumumba, the Congolese owner of a bar where she worked part-time, in Kercher’s stabbing death, The Associated Press reported.

Knox told the court that she wrongly accused an innocent man under intense police pressure, The New York Times reported.

“I am very sorry that I was not strong enough to resist the pressure of police,’’ Knox told the panel in a 9-minute prepared statement, according to the AP. She told them: “I didn’t know who the murderer was. I had no way to know.”

Knox was convicted in 2009 of slander for falsely accusing Lumumba of murdering Kercher in the Italian city of Perugia. An appellate court in Florence upheld that conviction on Wednesday, CNN reported.

Knox spent several years in jail but was acquitted in 2015 of the killing of her housemate in Italy when both were foreign-exchange students in Perugia.

Knox signed two statements prepared by police regarding the accusation against Lumumba, CNN reported, but a handwritten note she later wrote contradicted the statements.

She was convicted of slandering Lumumba and sentenced to three years in prison. She had already served the three years while she was awaiting her trial on charges she murdered Kercher.

Wednesday’s verdict will not result in her serving jail time but may include a fine.

Writing on social media on Monday, Knox said she hoped to “clear my name once and for all of the false charges against me.”

© 2024 Cox Media Group