Amanda Knox says she’s been left ‘confused’ by yesterday’s ruling at an Italian court docket that noticed her slander conviction towards a bar proprietor after she accused him of killing British pupil Mereditch Kercher in 2007 upheld as soon as once more.
Knox, 36, attended the court docket in Florence, Italy, yesterday morning for the retrial within the hope she might clear her identify ‘as soon as and for all’.
Seattle-born Knox, alongside together with her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, have been convicted of homicide of their first trial in 2009, however have been finally exonerated by Italy’s highest court docket in 2015.
Nonetheless, Knox’s 2011 slander conviction referring to Patrick Lumumba who she accused of killing Kercher nonetheless hung over her head.
She mentioned right now on her podcast Labyrinths: ‘I am feeling confused by this final result, as a result of I assumed this was a really easy continuing. This isn’t a state of affairs prefer it’s been earlier than.
”It isn’t a “he mentioned, she mentioned” state of affairs, it is not specialists deciphering proof in numerous methods, it is a single doc that is three pages lengthy.
Amanda Knox, 36, (pictured) attended the court docket in Florence, Italy, yesterday morning for the retrial within the hope she might clear her identify ‘as soon as and for all’
Seattle-born Knox, alongside together with her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, have been convicted of homicide of their first trial in 2009, however have been finally exonerated by Italy’s highest court docket in 2015
The slaying of Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old pupil on the College of Leeds, (pictured) fueled world headlines
Regardless of this, she added that she was feeling ‘very decided to maintain preventing this’, echoing a sentiment expressed on her X, the place she wrote, referring to the judges and jury members concerned in her case: ‘They did not hear me. However I have been right here earlier than. And this would possibly not cease me from preventing for the reality.’
Knox yesterday apologised to the court docket and mentioned that she wrongly accused him after being put below intense police stress for hours, including she had been ‘scared, tricked and mistreated.’
She mentioned: I’m very sorry that i used to be not sturdy sufficient to withstand the stress of police’
However the two judges and 6 juror right now once more discovered her responsible of slander.
Whereas she won’t need to serve any further jail time her attorneys mentioned after the decision that Knox is ’embittered, upset and shocked’ and so they have been planning to attraction the choice.
Knox instructed the panel in a 9-minute ready assertion in court docket: ‘I’m very sorry that I used to be not sturdy sufficient to withstand the stress of police.’
She mentioned right now on her podcast Labyrinths: ‘I am feeling confused by this final result, as a result of I assumed this was a really easy continuing’
Knox initially accused the Congolese proprietor of a bar, Patrick Lumumba, (pictured exterior Perugia’s court docket, central Italy, Tuesday September 16, 2008) of killing Kercher
She has returned to Italy to clear her identify over slander cost that she was discovered responsible of after making claims towards a bar proprietor
She added: ‘I did not know who the assassin was. I had no option to know.’
‘The police threatened me with 30 years in jail, an officer slapped me 3 times saying “Keep in mind, keep in mind”,’ Knox, 36, mentioned.
She earlier instructed the choose: ‘I by no means wished to slander Patrick; he was my good friend.’
However Lumumba’s attorneys mentioned after the listening to the bar proprietor’s status suffered no matter whether or not she knew who the assassin was.
‘When Patrick was accused by Amanda, he grew to become recognized all over the place because the monster of Perugia,’ Lumumba’s lawyer Carlo Pacelli instructed reporters saying that the conviction ought to be upheld. Lumumba was not in court docket.
Knox’s lawyer mentioned in response to the decision: ‘Amanda may be very upset on the final result of this listening to, she was trying to have a last level after 17 years of judicial process.
He added: ‘We’re very shocked on the final result, the choice. We have to learn fastidiously the motivation which might be obtainable within the subsequent 60 days.’
The slaying of Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old pupil on the College of Leeds, fueled world headlines as suspicion fell on Knox, then a 20-year-old alternate pupil, and her new Italian boyfriend of only a week, Raffaele Sollecito.
Amanda Knox and her former lover Raffaele Sollecito have been pictured reuniting in Italy 15 years after they have been arrested and wrongly convicted of the homicide of Briton Meredith Kercher
Knox, now 36, was cleared of 21-year-old Meredith’s homicide in 2015, alongside together with her boyfriend from 2007, Raffael Sollecito
Knox and Sollecito have been convicted of their first trial in 2007, however acquited in 2011.
They have been then discovered responsible once more in 2014, earlier than they have been finally exonerated by Italy´s highest court docket in 2015.
She is now the mom of two babies, and has a podcast together with her husband whereas campaigning towards wrongful convictions.
Yesterday, Knox wrote on social media: ‘I’ll stroll into the exact same courtroom the place I used to be reconvicted of against the law I didn´t commit, this time to defend myself but once more.’
She added: ‘I hope to clear my identify as soon as and for all the false costs towards me. Want me luck.’
Regardless of Knox’s exoneration and the conviction of an Ivorian man, Rudy Guede, whose footprints and DNA have been discovered on the scene, doubts about her function persist years later, notably in Italy.
Knox’s day in court docket was set by a European court docket ruling in 2019 that Italy violated her human rights throughout a protracted night time of questioning days after Kercher’s homicide, disadvantaged of each a lawyer and a reliable translator.
Final November, Italy’s highest Cassation Courtroom threw out the slander conviction that had withstood 5 trials, ordering a brand new trial, due to a 2022 Italian judicial reform permitting instances which have reached a definitive verdict to be reopened if human rights violations are discovered.
Knox pictured leaving with penitentiary police after a court docket listening to in Perugia on September 16, 2008
Ivory Coast man Rudy Guede, 36, (pictured in 2016) was launched from jail in 2021 after serving 13 years for brutally killing Meredith – though he all the time denied any involvement
This time, the court docket has been ordered to ignore two damaging statements typed by police and signed by Knox at 1:45pm and 5:45pm as she was held for questioning in a single day into the early hours of November 6, 2007.
Within the statements, Knox mentioned she remembered listening to Kercher scream, and pointed to Patrick Lumumba, the proprietor of a bar the place she labored, for the killing.
Hours later, nonetheless in custody at about 1 pm, she requested for pen and paper and wrote her personal assertion in English, questioning the model that she had signed.
‘With reference to this ‘confession’ that I made final night time, I wish to clarify that I´m very uncertain of the verity of my statements as a result of they have been made below the stress of stress, shock and excessive exhaustion,’ she wrote.
However regardless of Knox’s makes an attempt at strolling again the accusation, Lumumba was picked up for questioning and held in jail for nearly two weeks after she mentioned she had ‘lined her ears’ whereas he slit the throat of her flat mate.
Lumumba was solely launched after a Swiss college professor got here ahead with a until receipt proving the father-of-two was at work and never concerned within the crime.
Talking to Italian media final 12 months, Patrick, who now lives in Krawkow, Poland, together with his accomplice and youngsters, stormed: ‘My life has actually been turned the wrong way up.
‘Amanda knew very nicely that I used to be harmless, however these few phrases that she mentioned to the police on the morning of November 6, 2007, ‘… he killed her’, destroyed me in a flash, eliminating the status I loved in Perugia’.
Nonetheless, the slander conviction towards Knox endured, a authorized stain that continued to gas doubts about her function within the killing, notably in Italy – regardless of the conviction of Rudy Hermann Guede in 2008, a person from Ivory Coast whose DNA and footprints have been discovered on the crime scene.
The burglar was convicted of murdering Kercher and he was sentenced to 30 years behind bars.
Guede’s DNA was found on Kercher’s physique regardless of his claims that he was within the toilet listening to music when she was killed.
Meredith Kercher, from Coulsdon, Surrey, was killed simply three months after transferring to Italy for a examine overseas programme at Perugia’s prestigious college (pictured: in an undated picture launched in November 2007)
Meredith’s mother and father Arline (centre) and John (proper) Kercher – who each died in 2020 – and her sister Stephanie (left) at a press convention in Perugia in November 2007
Her physique was present in her bed room, partially undressed, with 47 stab wounds.
Kercher’s heartbroken household revealed in 2022 that her mother and father, John and Arline, handed away inside weeks of one another in 2020.
In a tribute to Meredith, who was recognized by the nickname Mez, her surviving siblings mentioned: ‘Each anniversary of Meredith’s dying provides us pause for thought, however after all as with anybody who has misplaced a beloved one – particularly in such tragic circumstances – it doesn’t take an anniversary to recollect them; it is one thing you carry with you on daily basis.
‘Fifteen years has handed within the blink of an eye fixed however but we now have lived a lifetime in between – one thing Meredith sadly, was by no means afforded.
‘Shedding each our mother and father inside simply 4 months of one another in early 2020 introduced its personal tragedy however we will take some solace in realizing that they’re now united with Mez and now not need to stay with the grief which consumed them.
‘Meredith will all the time be in our ideas and endlessly in our hearts.’
She is survived by her sister Stephanie.
Guede, now 36, was launched from jail in 2021 after serving 13 years of a 16-year time period handed down in a fast-track trial that foresees lighter sentences below Italian regulation.
Guede was just lately ordered to put on a monitoring bracelet and never depart his residence at night time after an ex-girlfriend accused him of bodily and sexual abuse – an investigation is ongoing.
