Amanda Knox retrial over slander conviction begins in Italy

An Italian court has opened a new trial against Amanda Knox over a slander conviction she received for wrongly accusing a bar owner of murdering the British student Meredith Kercher.

Knox, who, along with her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, spent four years in prison after being convicted over Kercher’s murder in 2007, asked for the slander conviction to be dropped on the basis of a ruling by the European court of human rights in 2019 that found her defence rights had been violated during police questioning in 2007. Italy’s top court ordered a retrial of the slander conviction in October.

Knox, 36, was planning to attend the retrial on Wednesday at Florence’s appeals court but her lawyer, Carlo Dalla Vedova, told Ansa news agency that she remained in the US as “she is busy taking care of her two young children, one of whom was born recently”.

The challenge to the conviction was also enabled by a 2022 reform to Italy’s code of criminal procedure.

Kercher, a 21-year-old student from Coulsdon, south London, was murdered in the home she shared with Knox, an American, in the university town of Perugia in November 2007. Her body was found in her bedroom, partly undressed with multiple stab wounds. She had been sexually assaulted.

Knox was handed a three-year jail term after wrongly accusing Patrick Lumumba, who owned a bar where she worked part-time in Perugia, of the crime. Lumumba spent two weeks in jail and was released only after a witness came forward with an alibi for him. Knox’s sentence was served during the four years she was imprisoned before being found not guilty of Kercher’s murder on appeal in 2011.

Lawyers for Knox, who at the time was a 20-year-old student who spoke basic Italian, argue she made the allegation against Lumumba under police duress and did not have legal assistance or an interpreter.

Knox was also ordered to pay Lumumba compensation. “But he never received a cent,” his lawyer, Carlo Pacelli, said in October. The allegation led Lumumba to lose his business and move his family out of Italy.

Knox and Sollecito were definitively acquitted of Kercher’s murder in a high court ruling in 2015 that described “stunning flaws” in the investigation that led to their convictions.

Rudy Guede, who was the only person definitively convicted of the murder, was released from prison in November 2021 after completing 13 years of a 16-year-sentence. Guede is under investigation for allegedly physically and sexually abusing an ex-girlfriend since being released.