Why Was Amanda Knox Reconvicted of Slander?

 

Over 15 years have passed since Amanda Knox’s wrongful conviction in the murder of her roommate, 21-year-old Meredith Kercher, but her legal battles are still far from over. On Wednesday, Knox — who was exonerated of murder charges nine years ago — was re-convicted on slander charges in Florence, Italy, where a court maintains that she unjustly accused an innocent man of killing Kercher during a 2007 police interrogation.

Knox and Kercher were college students and housemates studying abroad in Perugia, Italy, when Kercher was found dead in their shared apartment in November of 2007. Italian police determined that Kercher, who was discovered with a slit throat and multiple stab wounds, had also been sexually assaulted. The case — along with salacious suspicions that Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, had been involved — drew international attention. The duo was arrested and named prime suspects in the murder, along with Perugia resident and alleged burglar Rudy Guede.

 During Knox and Sollecito’s 2009 murder trial, Italian prosecutors argued that the trio killed Kercher for refusing to join them in a drug-fueled sex game. Knox and Sollecito were convicted and sentenced to a respective 26 and 25 years in prison, while Guede was tried separately and sentenced to 30. Years of legal volleyball ensued: Knox and Sollecito, who both maintained their innocence after the verdict, were acquitted after appealing their convictions, only to be convicted again before they were ultimately exonerated by Italy’s highest court. (Guede was released from prison in 2021, after serving 13 years of a reduced 16-year-sentence.)

How do the slander charges fit into all of this? During her initial conviction, Knox was also found guilty of falsely accusing Patrick Lumumba, a bar owner she worked for part-time, of murdering Kercher during a lengthy night of police questioning. That conviction, which was upheld by numerous Italian courts, was based on typed statements from the Italian police that were signed by Knox, who retracted her accusations in a handwritten note after her interrogation and argued that she only made them under intense police coercion. Lumumba was nevertheless arrested and held as a murder suspect. He was released from custody two weeks later after a client provided him with an alibi and sued Knox for slander. She was sentenced to three years for slander, which she served during her four-year stint in an Italian prison.