Nine years after being acquitted once and for all in a sensational murder trial that shocked the world, Amanda Knox is headed back to Italy for the first time, determined to close the final chapter of her legal saga.
In 2007, Knox, then a 20-year-old exchange student from Seattle studying in the Umbrian university town of Perugia, was arrested along with her boyfriend for the murder of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher. She was convicted in the first trial, and spent four years in an Italian prison before she was eventually fully exonerated of the crime in 2015.
Despite the exoneration, Knox still faces a slander charge for falsely accusing Diya "Patrick" Lumumba, a Congolese bar owner, of involvement in Kercher's murder during police questioning.
Lumumba was arrested in November 2007 and spent two weeks behind bars after Knox told Italian police he had killed 21-year-old Kercher. Under intense questioning, Knox, now 36, claimed she had covered her ears as Lumumba killed Kercher in the bedroom of the flat the two women shared. This claim was later proven false, and Knox received a three-year sentence for slander.
On June 5th, I will walk into the very same courtroom where I was reconvicted of a crime I didn't commit, this time to defend myself yet again. I hope to clear my name once and for all of the false charges against me. Wish me luck. Crepi il lupo!
— Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) June 3, 2024
The opportunity for Knox to challenge the slander conviction arose when the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Italy violated her human rights during the police interrogation. Her statements, according to the court, were made under prolonged questioning in Italian, without a lawyer or competent translator present.
Italy's highest court subsequently threw out Knox's slander conviction in November 2023 and ordered a retrial.
A verdict in the slander case retrial is expected on Wednesday, with Knox appearing in an Italian court for the first time in over a decade.
The slander charge is the last remaining legal issue for Knox in connection with the Kercher case. If cleared, it would remove the final legal stain from her record.
After her first acquittal, Knox returned to the United States in October 2011. She is now a mother of two young children and also actively campaigns against wrongful convictions.
In 2016, she was the subject of the Netflix documentary Amanda Knox, in which she shared her perspective of the night Kercher was killed and the wrongful conviction and imprisonment she and her then-boyfriend, Raffael Sollecito, endured. Knox has since hosted the podcast The Truth About True Crime and the web series The Scarlet Letter Reports.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Jesus is a Newsweek Live News Reporter based in New York. Originally from Bogotá, Colombia, his focus is reporting on ... Read more
