Amanda Knox’s Slander Conviction Upheld by Italian Court in Meredith Kercher Murder Case

Amanda Knox's legal journey has reached a new verdict.

Nearly 17 years after Knox was first accused of her roommate Meredith Kercher's murder in 2007—of which she was convicted and later acquitted—on June 5 an Italian court has upheld her 2009 conviction of slander against Patrick Lumumba, who Knox falsely accused of the murder while under intense interrogation.

With her new conviction, the 36-year-old has been sentenced to three years imprisonment—none of which she will serve as she already served the length of the original slander conviction's sentencing during her four years in detention following her wrongful conviction of Kercher's murder. 

According to NBC News, while outside the courthouse in Florence, Italy, Knox's lawyer told the outlet he was "very surprised at the outcome of the decision and Amanda is very upset."

E! News has reached out to Knox's legal team for comment but has not yet heard back. 

The Seattle native accused Lumumba—a local bar owner for whom she'd been working part-time upon moving to Italy—of Kercher's murder during an interrogation in 2007, which led to his arrest and an incarceration period of two weeks. 

At the time, per NBC, Knox was interrogated by police despite having only a rudimentary knowledge of Italian, and ultimately signed two statements prepared by police within which she accused the bar-owner of the murder. However, she then wrote a handwritten note only hours later in English casting doubt on the testimony she had provided to the police.  

While Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of Kercher's murder in 2009—then acquitted and convicted again in 2011 and 2014, respectively—the pair were ultimately exonerated by the Supreme Court of Cassation, Italy's highest court in March 2015. However, the slander conviction remained against Knox. 

But in 2019, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Knox's original interrogation by police violated her human rights and ordered the Italian legal system should pay her $20,000. The Court of Human Rights' ruling also compelled Italy's Supreme Court to order a retrial at the appellate court level, which is the trial that concluded on June 5. 

During this retrial, Knox—who is a mother to two children with husband Christopher Robinson—addressed the court room in fluent Italian, per NBC News, describing the police interrogation as her "worst nightmare" while being questioned in a language she "barely knew" at the time. 

"When I couldn't remember the details, one of the officers gave me a little smack on the head and shouted, ‘remember, remember,'" Knox said, per the outlet. "And then I put together a jumble of memories and the police made me sign a statement. I was forced to submit. It had been a violation of my rights."

She continued, "I was a scared girl, deceived by the police and led not to trust her own memories."

Ahead of yet another appearance for Knox in court, she took to social media to share her hopes for the retrial. 

"On June 5th, I will walk into the very same courtroom where I was reconvicted of a crime I didn't commit, this time to defend myself yet again," she wrote on X, formerly Twitter, June 3. "I hope to clear my name once and for all of the false charges against me."

The appellate court's decision to uphold the slander charge will still have to go to Italy's supreme court once more, per CNN, and Knox has the chance to appeal the verdict. 

(E! News and NBC News are both part of NBCUniversal.)

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