Amanda Knox will soon be returning to the same Italian court where she was wrongfully convicted of murder in 2007, to defend herself in a retrial of a slander case which left her with a looming charge that withstood her other exonerations.
This retrial was approved after a European court ruled that Italy violated her human rights during an extensive night of questioning following the murder of her British roommate, 21-year-old Meredith Kercher, in November 2007 while the two were studying abroad in Perugia, Italy.
Knox, then 20 and now 36, along with her Italian boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted of murder in their first trial during 2007, but after a series of changed verdicts, they were ultimately exonerated by Italy’s highest court in 2015.
However, a slander conviction for accusing a Congolese bar owner in Kercher’s murder is the only charge against Knox that has remained after five court rulings that otherwise cleared her name.
The slander charge was mainly based on two statements typed by police that Knox signed during the early hours of Nov. 6, 2007, following an extended period of questioning in Italian from police, without a lawyer or competent translator being present.
This one conviction has continued to raise doubts about her innocence, most prominently in Italy, despite Rudy Hermann Guede, a man from Ivory Coast whose DNA was detected at the crime scene, being found guilty of killing Kercher. Guede served 13 years of a 16-year prison sentence handed down after a fast-track trial that, under Italian law, may result in a lighter sentence.
Given the European court’s ruling, Italy’s highest court threw out Knox’s slander conviction last November and ruled that the two statements typed by police were inadmissible. It then ordered a new trial, instructing the Florence court to consider only a handwritten statement that Knox wrote in English some hours after her reported forced confession.
Knox asserted online that she will vehemently defend herself in court and is determined to clear her name.
“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 posted to X on Monday. “Crepi il lupo!” She wrote at the end of her post, which is an Italian idiom used to thank others when they have wished you luck.
A verdict in the slander case retrial is expected on Wednesday.
