Amanda Knox, the American woman who was convicted in 2007 of murdering her college roommate Meredith Kercher while studying abroad in Italy, found herself back in court on Wednesday.
Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, faced a conviction for murder, where prosecutors portrayed them as sexual deviants who had killed Kercher during a failed sexual encounter. However, the case experienced multiple changes in verdicts and garnered global media coverage. Eventually, in 2015, a higher court overturned their conviction, leading to their exoneration.
One conviction against Knox remains, though. She was found guilty of slander for falsely accusing Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba of killing Kercher. Knox had been employed part-time at Lumumba’s bar in Perugia. The trial that commenced on Wednesday in Florence is centered around this charge of slander.
Shortly after the murder of Kercher, Knox, who was 20 at the time, underwent a grueling 53-hour interrogation without the presence of a lawyer or an official translator. It was during this intense process that she pointed fingers at Lumumba as the culprit behind Kercher’s killing. The police documented her statements and she affixed her signature to them.
Shortly after, however, she penned a four-page handwritten statement in English that raised significant uncertainty about her previous testimony to the authorities.
“I want to clarify that I have serious doubts about the truthfulness of the statements I made last night. They were made under highly stressful, shocking, and exhausting circumstances. Not only was I threatened with a 30-year jail sentence, but I was also physically assaulted when I couldn’t recall a particular detail accurately,” she explained in her statement. “It was amidst this immense pressure and after hours of confusion that my mind conjured up these responses.”
She expressed that she had vivid but hazy recollections of Lumumba in her thoughts. However, she admitted that these memories felt surreal, almost like a dream. She found herself uncertain about whether these were actual events or simply figments of her imagination, conjured up to make sense of the questions swirling in her mind and the inquiries she was being confronted with.
In 2016, the European Court of Human Rights determined that Knox’s rights were violated during the interrogation. Following the request of Knox’s lawyers, Italy’s highest court subsequently overturned the slander conviction and mandated a new trial.
The court has also ruled that the initial testimony typed up by the police will not be admissible as evidence in the retrial. Only Knox’s handwritten note can be used as evidence in the proceedings that began on Wednesday.
Knox is currently being tried in absentia and is not expected to personally attend the trial. According to her attorney, Carlo Dalla Vedova, Knox is currently in the United States, as she is occupied with the responsibilities of caring for her two young children, one of whom was recently born.
Lumumba spent two weeks in jail after Knox accused him, even though he had a strong alibi. As a result, he has since left Italy.
The prosecutor requested the court on Wednesday to affirm the slander conviction and impose a three-year penalty. However, even if she is found guilty, Knox has already spent enough time in prison in Italy for the previously overturned murder conviction, thus avoiding another period of incarceration.
Rudy Guede, a man whose footprints and DNA were discovered throughout the crime scene, was found guilty of murdering Kercher in 2008. He spent 13 years in prison before being released in 2021.
