Italy’s top court on Thursday upheld the defamation conviction of American citizen Amanda Knox in a nearly two-decade-old case.
Knox was convicted last year of defaming local bar owner Patrick Lumumba by implicating him in the 2007 murder of his British flatmate, Meredith Kercher.
Thursday’s ruling has no real impact on Knox, who has already spent several years in prison for Kercher’s murder. She was later acquitted and returned to the United States in 2011.
Rudy Guede was convicted of Kercher’s murder because DNA evidence linked him to the scene. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison and released in early 2021.
What was the reaction to the decision?
Knox, who was not in Italy for Thursday’s decision, described it as “unrealistic.”
“I have once again been found guilty of a crime I did not commit,” he said on social media platform X.
His lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova also expressed surprise at the verdict.
“We are incredulous,” Dalla Vedova told reporters by phone from the court. “This is completely unexpected in our view and completely unfair to Amanda.”
Meanwhile, Lumumba welcomed the court’s decision, saying he was satisfied with it.
He said, “Amanda was wrong. This is a decision she will have to live with for the rest of her life.”
Who is Amanda Knox?
Knox was a 20-year-old exchange student in Perugia when her British roommate, Kercher, was found dead in her bedroom on November 2, 2007.
She and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were initially convicted of murder in a 2009 trial, which was overturned in 2011. Knox then returned to the United States, but was found guilty again in a retrial in 2014 and ultimately acquitted by Italy. Supreme Court in 2015.
However, the stigma of slander remained.
During police interrogation, Knox implicated Lumumba in the murder. This led to the local bar owner being jailed for two weeks before being released without charge.
Knox later claimed that Italian police threatened him with 30 years in prison and used violence to pressure him to name the Congolese Berman as the killer.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2019 that Knox was not given adequate legal representation or a professional interpreter during police interrogation.
Knox had appealed the conviction based on that decision but lost last year when a court in Florence sentenced her to three years in prison. That sentence was upheld Thursday but had no practical effect because it covered the time Knox spent in prison for murder.
rmt/lo (AFP, AP, Reuters)