Amanda Knox is still facing the fallout of the 2007 killing of her British roommate.
On Wednesday, the now 36-year-old has been reconvicted in an ongoing slander case surrounding Knox falsely accusing her boss, Patrick Lumumba, of killing her roommate, Meredith Kercher, The Associated Press reported. After the accusation, Lumumba was arrested which led to his two-week incarceration. The trial in an appeals court in Florence was a retrial of the original slander conviction. Knox was convicted of slander in 2009, CNN reported.
However, Knox, who has since turned into a criminal justice advocate after her nearly four-year-long prison sentence in Italian prison and eventual exoneration in 2015 by the Italian supreme court, argued that her statements to police in 2007 were coerced. She claimed that the accusation was only made because police were intensely questioning her. She said to the judge she was “exhausted and confused” when she accused Lumumba of the killing as she relied on her then-remedial Italian. In 2007, Knox had signed two police statements confirming her accusation against Lumumba. However, the second statement cast doubt on the accusation.
The ruling does not clear Knox’s name which has been muddled with murder charges for almost two decades. However, the decision does not mean the legal saga is over. It will have to go to Italy’s supreme court, and Knox has the chance to appeal.
“Amanda is very upset from the outcome,” her lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova said. Vedova continued that her legal team did not expect that ruling. “She was looking to have a final point of all this, 17 years now, [of] judicial procedure.”