Italy’s highest courtroom on Thursday upheld the slander conviction of Amanda Knox, an American who was first convicted after which acquitted of killing her housemate in 2007, for accusing an harmless man within the case.
The courtroom ruling might put an finish to a authorized saga that has riveted followers in Europe and the US. It has lasted greater than 17 years and has gone by varied Italian and European-level courts. The courtroom upheld Ms. Knox’s 3-year jail sentence, however she is not going to should serve any extra time, as she already spent 4 years in jail, from 2007 to 2011.
Ms. Knox, now 37, who lives close to Seattle, was not current on the listening to on Thursday. One in every of her legal professionals, Carlo Dalla Vedova, spoke to her after the decision and stated she was “very, very disillusioned.”
“She had been hoping to shut this chapter,” he stated.
Ms. Knox has been attempting to take away the final authorized stain from her title, 10 years after Italy’s highest courtroom definitively acquitted her of killing Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old British pupil.
In November, 2007, the Italian authorities arrested Ms. Knox, then 20, and her boyfriend on the time, Raffaele Sollecito, then 23, for the dying of Ms. Kercher, who was discovered mendacity on her mattress together with her throat slashed; all three have been learning within the picturesque central Italian metropolis of Perugia. The involvement of privileged and engaging younger folks from a number of international locations, and what prosecutors described as a intercourse sport gone fallacious, fueled intense worldwide curiosity within the case.
Initially convicted in 2009 of the killing however acquitted on enchantment, Ms Knox returned to the US in 2011. Her case bounced between varied courts till, in 2015, when Italy’s highest courtroom threw out fees it stated had been marred by flimsy proof and a rush to judgment.
Rudy Guede, a Perugia resident with a police historical past of break-ins, was tried individually and convicted within the homicide case. He served 13 years of a 16-year sentence and was released in 2021.
The slander case concerned Diya Lumumba, also called Patrick, who in 2007 ran a bar referred to as Le Stylish the place Ms. Knox labored part-time.
Ms. Knox and her legal professionals have argued that she was pressured by police into accusing Mr. Lumumba after a nightlong interrogation throughout which she stated she was slapped. Mr. Lumumba was arrested, held in jail for 2 weeks, and launched solely after one in all his purchasers offered an alibi.
Ms. Knox was initially discovered responsible of slandering him in 2009, and sentenced to a few years in jail, in a conviction that was upheld by varied Italian courts.
In 2019, Europe’s high human rights courtroom dominated that Ms. Knox had been deprived of adequate legal assistance whereas being interrogated, violating her proper to a good trial, and ordered Italy to pay her 18,400 euros, or about $21,000 on the time, in damages, prices and bills. The courtroom additionally raised questions in regards to the function of Ms. Knox’s interpreter, and stated that her statements throughout the interrogation “had been taken in an environment of intense psychological stress.”
Italy’s excessive courtroom ordered a brand new slander trial primarily based on that ruling, however she was convicted once more by a Florence court last year. Her enchantment was rejected on Thursday by the Rome-based Courtroom of Cassation, Italy’s highest courtroom.
Through the listening to on Thursday, Mr. Dalla Vedova, had stated that Mr. Lumumba had “not been a sufferer of Ms. Knox however alongside Ms. Knox.”
Luca Lupária Donati, one other of her legal professionals, stated they’d wait to learn the courtroom’s reasoning earlier than deciding whether or not to enchantment once more to the European human rights courtroom. “We’re curious to learn what they are saying,” he of Thursday’s ruling, because it “diminished what the European courtroom had dominated.”
“That is one thing I discover very unjust for Amanda,” he stated.
Ms. Knox has spoken regularly on her podcast, Labyrinths, of the psychological and emotional toll that the conviction has taken on her. There have additionally been sensible results — she wrote on X this week that she lately needed to cancel a visit to Australia as she was unable to get a visa due to her “felony” background.
Since returning to the US, Ms. Knox, now a mom of two, has grow to be an advocate for folks unjustly incarcercerated and a campaigner for felony justice reform. She can also be co-producing a Hulu series about the case that’s at the moment being shot in Italy and Hungary.
Due to the accusation, Mr. Lumumba misplaced his enterprise, and he left Italy along with his household. He now lives in Krakow, Poland, the place he runs an import-export enterprise, however he misses his life in Perugia, he stated on the courthouse on Thursday.
He, too, stated he couldn’t wait to place the case behind him. The unending trials “all the time recall to mind that morning once they got here to arrest me, and the times in jail,” he stated.
Carlo Pacelli, his lawyer, stated Thursday that not solely had Ms. Knox by no means apologized for falsely accusing his consumer, she had by no means supplied to make monetary amends.
In Florence final 12 months, Ms. Knox supplied an apology of types, saying: “I’m very sorry I used to be not sturdy sufficient to withstand the stress of the police and that he suffered for it.”
After the decision, Mr. Pacelli stated his consumer might use the sentence to ask for damages, however that there could possibly be insurmountable obstacles, “as a result of Amanda lives in the US and it’s not straightforward to pursue.”
