Amanda Knox, 36, appeared in court in Florence to await the verdict on her appeal to overturn a slander conviction stemming from falsely accusing a bar owner of murdering British student Meredith Kercher. Knox expressed her hopes of finally clearing her name from what she deems as false charges against her.
Accompanied by her husband, Christopher Robinson, Amanda Knox arrived at the appeals court without engaging with journalists. The hearing is being conducted privately, and the verdict is anticipated later in the day.
Knox, who previously served four years in prison alongside her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in 2007, sought to have her slander conviction dropped. This request was based on a 2019 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, which found violations of her defense rights during police interrogations in 2007. Italy’s highest court ordered a retrial of the slander conviction in October, with support from a 2022 reform to Italy’s criminal procedure code.
Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old student from Coulsdon, south London, was found murdered in the Perugia home she shared with Knox. Her body was discovered with multiple stab wounds and signs of sexual assault in November 2007.
Amanda Knox received a three-year jail term for falsely accusing Patrick Lumumba, the owner of a bar where she worked part-time in Perugia, of Meredith Kercher’s murder. Lumumba spent two weeks in jail before being released when an alibi emerged. Knox served her sentence during her four-year imprisonment before being acquitted of Kercher’s murder on appeal in 2011.
Knox’s lawyers argue that, as a 20-year-old student with limited Italian proficiency, she made the accusation against Lumumba under police pressure without legal representation or an interpreter.
Lumumba, a civil plaintiff in the Florence trial, seeks the reinstatement of Knox’s slander conviction. His lawyer, Carlo Pacelli, stated in October that Lumumba never received any compensation from Knox, despite the allegation leading to the loss of his business and his family relocating from Italy.
