FLORENCE: On Wednesday ( Jun 5 ) an Italian court re-convicted Amanda Knox of slander after retrying her conviction for killing her British roommate. She was already imprisoned for the murder before being found innocent.
The American wept in Florence jury as she was given a three-year prison sentence for allegedly questioning a Congolese cafe owner about the murder of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher.
” Amanda is quite upset at the results of this reading, she was looking to have a final stage after 17 years of administrative treatment”, her attorney Carlo Dalla Vedova said briefly.
He claimed they were “very surprised” by the choice and that they could contest it after having examined the full ruling, which would be made within 60 times.
Knox and her Roman partner, both 20, were detained for the harsh killing of a friend and pupil Kercher at the girls ‘ shared house in Perugia in November 2007.
A lengthy legal saga followed, where the couple was found guilty, acquitted, found criminal again and finally cleared in 2015.
Knox was still facing a 2011 slander faith for first telling police that Patrick Lumumba was the criminal, despite which he had already received a three-year sentence already served.
The highest court in Italy ordered a lawsuit, which started earlier this year, and threw out that decision on appeal next October.
Knox flew in for Wednesday’s last hear to defend herself, where she apologised for naming Lumumba, blaming force from officers.
” I’m very sorry I was hardly strong enough to have resisted the officers pressure”, Knox, then a 36- yr- aged mother of two, told the judges.
” I was scared, tricked and mistreated. I gave the testimony during a time of philosophical issue.
Without an established speaker or lawyer, she claimed she was being questioned” for hours and hours, in a speech I scarcely knew.”
” I did n’t know who the killer was… They refused to believe me”, she said.
” Dragon OF Florence”
In November 2007, Kercher’s half-naked body was discovered in a pool of blood inside the neighbors ‘ farmhouse.
Her mouth had been cut, and she had received numerous stab wounds.
Lumumba spent nearly two weeks in jail before being uncharged after being lied to by Knox.
Knox said last October that at the time of Kercher’s death, Lumumba “was my buddy”.
But Lumumba’s attorney, Carlo Pacelli, said her accusation changed his life.
He told investigators outside court on Wednesday,” When he was accused by Amanda, he became widely regarded as the dragon of Perugia.”
Pacelli later claimed Knox had been ordered to pay his employer’s legal expenses and payment, but that the amount had not yet been determined.
As a swarm of reporters watched, Knox’s father gave her a hug in the same court where she was reconvicted of death in 2014.
Her death trial attracted a lot of salacious media attention, with particular attention paid to prosecutors ‘ says that Kercher died as a result of a sex game gone bad.
“MAJOR FLAWS”
But Italy’s highest court, when it acquitted Knox and former partner Raffaele Sollecito once and for all, said there had been “major imperfections” in the officers research.
Knox was cleared of slandering officers in 2016 after filing a distinct complaint against the police.
The American, who is now a blogger, writer, and advocate for criminal justice reform, filed a lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights.
During her investigation, it was determined that Knox had not received enough legal counsel or a qualified translator.
The courts cited that ruling last October, which stated that her care” compromised the impartiality of the trials as a whole.”
During her evidence on Wednesday, Knox said police hit her.
She said,” They told me that I had witnessed anything so horrifying that my brain had blocked it.”
” One of the soldiers cuffed me around the nose and said’ remember, remember! ‘”, she said.
” In the end… I was forced to submit. I could n’t help but be exhausted and perplexed.
One man remains convicted of Kercher’s crime- Ivorian Rudy Guede, who was linked to the field by DNA information.
He was sentenced in 2008 to 30 years for death and sexual abuse, his sentence after reduced on charm to 16 years.
Guede was made public at the beginning of November 2021.