Years after she was exonerated of the brutal murder of her roommate, Amanda Knox returned to Italy this week and was found guilty of slander for accusing an innocent man of killing Meredith Kercher.
Knox, 36, was sentenced to three years in prison for the false accusation of Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba in 2007, Reuters reported.
Knox herself spent four years in prison for the murder of 21-year-old Brit Kercher before the verdict was overturned, as CrimeOnline reported. Rudy Guede was ultimately convicted of Kercher’s rape and murder, in a ruling that said he did not act alone. He served 13 years of a 16-year sentence and was released in 2021.
Kercher was found dead in the apartment she shared with Knox, stabbed 47 times. Italian authorities initially blamed Knox and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito. Both were ultimately cleared in 2015.
Knox accused Lumumba of the crime during a lengthy overnight questioning by Italian police after Kercher’s killing. She was initially convicted of slander but the European Court of Human Rights ordered another trial in the case in 2019, the Associated Press reported.
The original verdict of slander was based on two typed statements by police after Knox’s questioning. The following day, she provided a handwritten statement that attempted to walk back her accusation of Lumumba, but that statement was also unclear and somewhat inconsistent. The European court ruled the two police statement inadmissable, because Knox did not have a lawyer or an interpreter present, and told the court to consider only the handwritten statement.
“The police threatened me with 30 years in prison, an officer slapped me three times saying ‘Remember, remember,'” she told the court on Wednesday, Reuters said.
“I’m very sorry that I wasn’t strong enough to withstand the pressure from the police,” she said.
Knox’s attorney, Luca Luparia Donati, told reporters after the case was over that she planned to appeal.
Knox will not return to jail after the new conviction. The three year sentence is covered by the time she spent in prison when she was convicted of killing Kercher.
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[Featured image: FILE – Amanda Knox, center, is escorted by Italian penitentiary police officers to Perugia’s court in 2008. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito, File)]
