Italy opens new slander trial against Amanda Knox
FLORENCE, Italy — Amanda Knox was back on trial for slander Wednesday for wrongly accusing a Congolese man of murdering her roommate while the young women were exchange students in Italy. Knox herself was convicted of the slaying before being exonerated in a case that grabbed the global spotlight.
Knox was a 20-year-old student with rudimentary Italian who had recently arrived in Perugia, when she endured a long night of questioning in the murder of Meredith Kercher. She ended up accusing the owner of a bar where she worked parttime of killing the 21-yearold British student.
In 2016, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the interrogation violated her rights because she was questioned without a lawyer or official translator.
In November, Italy’s highest Cassation Court threw out the slander conviction — the only remaining guilty verdict against Knox after the same court definitively threw out convictions for Kercher’s murder against Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, nine years ago.
That conviction, which endured multiple trials and appeals, has remained a legal stain against her, especially in Italy, as she pursues a new life in the United States campaigning for judicial reform.
Another man was convicted in Kercher’s 2007 murder.
Knox, now 36, did not appear in Wednesday’s hearing in Florence, and is being tried in absentia. She remains in the United States, where she campaigns for social justice and has a variety of media projects including a podcast and a limited series on her case in development with Hulu.
Knox’s accusation against bar owner Patrick Lumumba appeared in statements typed by police that she signed, but which have been ruled inadmissible in the new trial by Italy’s highest court.
She recanted the accusation in a four-page handwritten note in English penned the following afternoon — the only evidence the court can rule on.
However, a lawyer for Lumumba, Carlo Pacelli, argued to readmit the disallowed documents as reference since Knox referred to them multiple times in her written statement.