{"id":27847,"date":"2024-06-05T07:22:16","date_gmt":"2024-06-05T11:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=27847"},"modified":"2024-06-05T07:22:16","modified_gmt":"2024-06-05T11:22:16","slug":"amanda-knox-fails-to-overturn-slander-conviction-in-italy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2024\/06\/05\/amanda-knox-fails-to-overturn-slander-conviction-in-italy\/","title":{"rendered":"Amanda Knox fails to overturn slander conviction in Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amanda Knox has lost her bid to overturn a slander conviction in Italy.<\/p>\n

The American woman was eventually cleared of the brutal 2007 murder of her flatmate, 21-year-old Meredith Kercher, in the apartment they shared in the Italian university town of Perugia.<\/p>\n

But she was only released, in 2011, after four years in prison in Italy.<\/p>\n

The slander conviction for wrongly accusing a Congolese bar owner who employed her part-time of the murder during an interrogation was the only charge against\u00a0Knox<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0that withstood five court rulings that ultimately exonerated her.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Meredith<\/div>
Meredith Kercher. (Image: PA)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Italian court found Knox guilty of slander and issued a three-year sentence.<\/p>\n

She had been sentenced to three years for wrongly accusing the bar owner, Patrick Lumumba, of the killing of Ms Kercher in an earlier case.<\/p>\n

She will not serve any more jail time as the sentence counts as time she has already served in prison.<\/p>\n

Knox cried and hugged her husband after the verdict was read out in court.<\/p>\n

Her lawyer said: “Amanda is very upset, she was hoping to finally clear her name.”<\/p>\n

Knox had argued in court in Florence this week that her slander conviction should be overturned because of her treatment by police.<\/p>\n

Along with her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, Knox was convicted of the murder of Ms Kercher in 2007. Both were\u00a0acquitted of the crime in 2011<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and then fully exonerated in 2015.<\/p>\n

She has since established herself in the US as an advocate, writer, podcaster and producer – with much of her work drawing on her experience in the Italian legal system.<\/p>\n

While Knox and Mr Sollecito were definitively acquitted of murder by Italy’s highest court in 2015, her conviction for slander against Mr Lumumba was not rescinded.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Diya<\/div>
Diya ‘Patrick’ Lumumba (left). (Image: AP)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

A year later, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled a long night of questioning days after Ms Kercher’s murder violated her rights because she was questioned without a lawyer or official translator.<\/p>\n

In light of this, Italy’s Supreme Court overturned the slander conviction last year and ordered a retrial.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Amanda<\/div>
(Image<\/span>: Reuters)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The new trial, which started last April, focused on just one piece of evidence: Knox’s four-page handwritten statement that the court examined to see if it contained elements to support slander against Mr Lumumba.<\/p>\n

He was held in jail for two weeks after Ms Kercher’s death before police released him and he has since left Italy.<\/p>\n

The letter, which Knox wrote in a 53-hour span of questioning over four days starting on 6 November 2007, reflects a state of confusion.<\/p>\n

“In regards to this ‘confession’ that I made last night, I want to make clear that I’m very doubtful of the verity [sic] of my statements because they were made under the pressures of stress, shock and extreme exhaustion,” Knox wrote.<\/p>\n

Rudy Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was convicted in 2008 of the sexual assault and murder of Ms Kercher. His DNA was found at the scene.\u00a0Guede was released from prison<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in 2021 after serving 13 years of a 16-year term.<\/p>\n

He was recently ordered to wear a monitoring bracelet and not leave his home at night after an ex-girlfriend accused him of physical and sexual abuse. An investigation is ongoing.<\/p>\n

Former Perugia public prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, who led the investigation into Ms Kercher’s murder, told Sky News during the opening hearing that “there may still be a culprit who took part in the murder and who has not been discovered yet”.<\/p>\n

Source: \u00a0\"Sky<\/a> news.sky.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amanda Knox has lost her bid to overturn a slander conviction in Italy. The American woman was eventually cleared of the brutal 2007 murder of her flatmate, 21-year-old Meredith Kercher, in the apartment they shared […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,2,3,6],"tags":[277,10401,2593,2451,1468,10404,3268,10403,10402,10400],"class_list":{"0":"post-27847","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-human-rights","8":"category-news","9":"category-usa","10":"category-world","11":"tag-amanda-knox","12":"tag-congolese","13":"tag-european-court-of-human-rights","14":"tag-florence","15":"tag-italy","16":"tag-italy-supreme-court","17":"tag-meredith-kercher","18":"tag-patrick-lumumba","19":"tag-perugia","20":"tag-slander","21":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27849,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27847\/revisions\/27849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}