Italy’s high court has upheld the remaining conviction against American Amanda Knox, who was jailed and later acquitted of the 2007 murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher. Knox was convicted of slandering her former boss Patrick Lumumba by falsely accusing him of Kercher’s murder. Knox, 20 at the time, signed two statements prepared by police regarding her accusation against Lumumba. She later wrote a handwritten note questioning her false accusation. Lumumba was arrested after Knox’s accusation and spent two weeks in jail until police released him due to lack of forensic evidence. He blames the arrest on his losing his club Le Chic, which closed shortly after.
In a long legal saga, Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of Kercher’s murder after her body was found at the student apartment she shared with Knox in Puglia. The two were acquitted, then reconvicted before being definitively acquitted in 2015. However, the slander conviction remained. Knox petitioned the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 2023 that her rights were violated during the 2007 interrogation that led to her false accusation against Lumumba.
In June 2024, a court in Florence upheld the slander conviction, which led to Thursday’s high court hearing. Knox, who attended the June 2024 hearing but who did not attend Thursday’s high court session, posted a lengthy thread on X outlining her side of the story, including how the police “were never held accountable for the crimes they committed against me behind closed doors.” She also wrote, “I’ll have more to say about this tomorrow, and on Friday, as I process what happens, whether I am finally acquitted or whether Italy will continue to blame me for the abuses of the Perugia police. Stay tuned.”
Lumumba, who did attend Thursday’s hearing, told reporters upon entering the court that Knox “never apologized to me.” Speaking outside court after the verdict, Lumumba said he was “very satisfied” with the ruling. “Amanda did wrong, this sentence must accompany her for the rest of her life. I had a good feeling about this since the afternoon. I hail Italian justice with great honor,” he said.
During the June hearing, Knox told the two-judge, six-jury panel that she was sorry she did not try to retract the accusation against Lumumba sooner, but insisted she was “a young person in an existential crisis” when she accused him. “I did not know who the assassin was,” she told the court. Knox does not face any additional jail time.
