Amanda Knox Headed to Trial Over Slander Charges Related to Murder Case
Amanda Knox is heading back to Italian court for charges relating to her 2007 murder trial.
“I’m on trial in Italy again,” Knox, 36, wrote in a lengthy Instagram post on Friday, October 13, before explaining: “This is a good thing.”
Knox, now 36, was convicted of murdering her British roommate Meredith Kercher in 2007 while studying abroad in Perugia, Italy at age 20. Her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, was also convicted of murdering Kercher. After spending nearly four years in prison, their convictions were overturned in 2011. Four years later, Italy’s Court of Cassation, the nation’s highest court, officially exonerated Knox and Sollecito, now 39. (In 2008, Rudy Guede was sentenced to 30 years for Kercher’s murder after his DNA was identified at the crime scene. His sentence was later reduced, and he was released from prison in November 2021.)
Though she was exonerated of her murder charges, Italian courts upheld Knox’s slander conviction, which was handed down after she wrongfully implicated bar owner Patrick Lumumba in Kercher’s murder. At the time of her release from prison in 2011, the court ruled three of her four years as time already served for the slander charge.
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In 2019, Knox explained in her post on Friday, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that during her interrogation for the 2007 murder, in which she implicated Lumumba, her rights to a lawyer and interpreter were violated. Due to recent reform, she said, the Court of Cassation has officially recognized this ruling. After appealing the charge, the court ordered a new trial on Friday.
“At the time of these tragic events, Patrick Lumumba was my friend. We are both victims of the violation of my human rights during my interrogation, without which I was helpless against the coercive pressure of the police,” Knox wrote. “The outcome of that interrogation derailed the investigation into Meredith Kercher’s murder, and led to the wrongful imprisonment of three different people. Patrick Lumumba suffered 10 days of wrongful imprisonment, and Raffaele and I nearly four years. One day in prison as an innocent person is one day too many.”
Now, Knox explained, she has “the opportunity to seek my full acquittal from this wrongful accusation of slander. And I will fight with my lawyers to prove my innocence once and for all.”
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In the years since her release from prison, Knox has become an outspoken activist and champion for the wrongfully convicted. She released a memoir, Waiting to Be Heard, in 2013, and in 2016, took part in a self-titled Netflix documentary about her case. In 2021, Knox announced the arrival of her first child, daughter Eureka Muse Knox-Robinson, with husband Christopher Robinson.
A date for Knox’s new trial has not yet been set but it is expected to take place in Florence.
