ROME — Amanda Knox is set to take another step in her ongoing battle for vindication as Italy’s highest court prepares to hear her appeal concerning a slander conviction. This conviction stems from her false accusations against a Congolese bar owner related to the 2007 murder of her British roommate. Knox expressed her fears about the outcome on her Labyrinths podcast, saying, “I’ve been having nightmares about getting a bad verdict and just living the rest of my life with a shadow hanging over me. It’s like a scarlet letter.”
The upcoming ruling could conclude a dramatic legal journey that has spanned 17 years, during which Knox and her former Italian boyfriend have seen their initial convictions and subsequent acquittals regarding the murder of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher. The two were ultimately exonerated by the Italian Supreme Court in 2015, but the slander conviction remained the last blemish on Knox’s record, surviving multiple appeals. This past June, a new trial was ordered after a European court found that Italy had infringed on her human rights, leading to Knox’s reconviction.
At the age of 37, Knox will not be present for the Cassation Court hearing, according to her attorney Carlo Dalla Vedova. Nevertheless, even if the court upholds her conviction along with the three-year sentence, Knox is not at risk of further imprisonment, having already served nearly four years during various legal proceedings. Her primary goal is to fully clear her name of any criminal allegations. She mentioned on her podcast, “Living with a false conviction is horrific, personally, psychologically, emotionally. I’m fighting it, and we’ll see what happens.”
After her release from prison in 2011, Knox returned to the United States, where she became a noted advocate for individuals wrongfully accused and convicted. She hosts a podcast with her husband and is about to release a new memoir titled, “Free: My Search for Meaning.” In June, she traveled back to Italy for the verdict regarding her slander trial and reportedly felt “very embittered” by the outcome.
The dramatic case began on November 2, 2007, when Knox, then a 20-year-old student in Perugia, discovered her roommate Kercher brutally murdered in their shared home. The case garnered widespread media attention, with Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, quickly becoming prime suspects. After numerous trials and appeals spanning eight years, both were fully cleared of the murder charges by 2015.
Rudy Hermann Guede, a man from Ivory Coast, was found guilty of the murder after DNA evidence linked him to the crime scene and served most of a 16-year sentence before his release in 2021. Knox’s slander conviction followed her accusations against Patrick Lumumba, the bar owner, during stressful police interrogations shortly after Kercher’s death. The European Court of Human Rights later determined that her rights had been violated by Italy’s judicial system for failing to provide adequate legal representation and translation services.
As a result of that ruling, Italy’s high court mandated a new slander trial, dismissing two statements that Knox had signed, falsely implicating Lumumba in the murder, and instructing the appellate court to consider only her handwritten letter in which she attempted to retract her accusations. However, the appellate court concluded that the content of her memo still substantiated a slander conviction.
