Amanda Knox returns to Italian courtroom, looking to clear name ‘once and for all’ in slander case

Florence, Italy — Amanda Knox returns to an Italian court on Wednesday for the first time in more than 12 and a half years to acquits himself “once and for all” of a charge of defamation That held true even after she was exonerated from the brutal 2007 murder of her British roommate in the idyllic hilltop town of Perugia.

The murder of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher fueled global headlines when suspicion fell on Knox, a 20-year-old exchange student from Seattle, and her new Italian boyfriend of just a week, Raffaele Sollecito. The indecisive verdicts over nearly eight years of legal proceedings polarized trial observers on both sides of the Atlantic as the The case was discussed loudly on social media.still in its infancy.

All these years later, despite Knox’s Exoneration and the conviction of an Ivory Coast man whose fingerprints and DNA were found at the scene, questions remain about his role, particularly in Italy. This is largely due to her accusation against a Congolese bar owner who employed her part-time, an accusation that led to her being found guilty of defamation.

Knox, now 36 and the mother of two young children, returns to italy for the second time since she was released in October 2011, after four years in prison, by a Perugia appeals court that overturned the initial guilty verdict in the murder case against Knox and Sollecito.

He remained in the United States for two more verdicts before Italy’s highest court finally cleared the couple of the murder in March 2015, stating flatly that they had not committed the crime.

“I will walk into the same courtroom where I was convicted again for a crime I did not commit, this time to defend myself once again,” Knox wrote on social media. “I hope to clear my name once and for all of the false charges against me. Wish me luck.”

Knox’s day in court was marked by a ruling by a European court that said Italy violated her human rights during a long night of interrogation days after Kercher’s murder, deprived of a lawyer and a competent translator. In the fall, Italy’s highest Court of Cassation threw out the defamation conviction that had withstood five trials, order a new testthanks to a 2022 Italian judicial reform that allows cases that have reached a final verdict to be reopened if human rights violations are discovered.

This time, the court was ordered to ignore two damaging statements typed by police and signed by Knox at 1:45 a.m. and 5:45 a.m. while she was detained for questioning overnight into the early hours of November 6. 2007. In statements, Knox said he remembered hearing Kercher scream and pointed the finger at Patrick Lumumba, the owner of a bar where he worked, for the murder.

Hours later, still in custody, around 1:00 p.m., he asked for a pen and paper and wrote his own statement in English, questioning the version he had signed.

“Regarding this ‘confession’ I made last night, I want to make it clear that I highly doubt the veracity of my statements because they were made under the pressure of stress, shock and extreme exhaustion,” he wrote.

Whatever the outcome, Knox is not at risk of spending any more time in jail. The four years he served before the first acquittal cover the three-year sentence for defamation.