Amanda Knox Re-Convicted of Slander in Italy Despite Murder Acquittal

An Italian court re-convicted Amanda Knox of slander on Wednesday, even after she was exonerated in the brutal 2007 murder of her British roommate while the two were exchange students in Italy.

The court found that Patrick Lumumba, the Congolese owner of the bar where she worked part-time, of the killing. But she will not serve any more jail time, given the three-year sentence counts as time already served.

Knox returned to Italy for only the second time since she was freed in 2011 to participate in the trial.

She had written on social media ahead of the hearing that she hoped to ‘clear my name once and for all of the false charges against me. Wish me luck.’

The slaying of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher in the idyllic hilltop town of Perugia fueled global headlines as suspicion fell on Knox, a 20-year-old exchange student from Seattle, and her new Italian boyfriend of just a week, Raffaele Sollecito.

Flip-flop verdicts over nearly eight years of legal proceedings polarized trial watchers on both sides of the Atlantic as the case was vociferously argued on social media, still in its infancy.

Knox’s retrial was set by a European court ruling that Italy violated her human rights during a long night of questioning days after Kercher’s murder, deprived of both a lawyer and a competent translator.

Earlier in the hearing, Knox had asked the eight Italian judges and civil jury members to clear her of the slander charge.

In a soft and sometimes breaking voice, Knox had told the court that she wrongly accused Patrick Lumumba under intense police pressure.

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Italy’s highest court ordered a retrial, which culminated Wednesday with the decision against Knox. Prosecutors had asked the court to confirm the slander conviction and impose a penalty of three years, which was granted, but as Knox already spent almost four years behind bars, starting in 2007, she won’t have to spend any more time in jail.