Italy’s highest court docket on Thursday upheld the slander conviction of Amanda Knox, an American who was first convicted after which acquitted of killing her housemate in 2007, for accusing an harmless man within the case.
The court docket ruling may put an finish to a authorized saga that has riveted followers in Europe and america. It has lasted greater than 17 years and has gone by numerous Italian and European-level courts. The court docket upheld Ms. Knox’s 3-year jail sentence, however she is not going to should serve any extra time, as she already spent 4 years in jail, from 2007 to 2011.
Ms. Knox, now 37, who lives close to Seattle, was not current on the listening to on Thursday. One in all her legal professionals, Carlo Dalla Vedova, spoke to her after the decision and stated she was “very, very disenchanted.”
“She had been hoping to shut this chapter,” he stated.
Ms. Knox has been making an attempt to take away the final authorized stain from her title, 10 years after Italy’s highest court docket definitively acquitted her of killing Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old British pupil.
In November, 2007, the Italian authorities arrested Ms. Knox, then 20, and her boyfriend on the time, Raffaele Sollecito, then 23, for the dying of Ms. Kercher, who was discovered mendacity on her mattress together with her throat slashed; all three had been finding out within the picturesque central Italian metropolis of Perugia. The involvement of privileged and enticing younger individuals from a number of international locations, and what prosecutors described as a intercourse recreation gone flawed, fueled intense worldwide curiosity within the case.
Initially convicted in 2009 of the killing however acquitted on attraction, Ms Knox returned to america in 2011. Her case bounced between numerous courts till, in 2015, when Italy’s highest court docket threw out fees it stated had been marred by flimsy proof and a rush to judgment.
Rudy Guede, a Perugia resident with a police historical past of break-ins, was tried individually and convicted within the homicide case. He served 13 years of a 16-year sentence and was released in 2021.
The slander case concerned Diya Lumumba, also called Patrick, who in 2007 ran a bar known as Le Stylish the place Ms. Knox labored part-time.
Ms. Knox and her legal professionals have argued that she was pressured by police into accusing Mr. Lumumba after a nightlong interrogation throughout which she stated she was slapped. Mr. Lumumba was arrested, held in jail for 2 weeks, and launched solely after considered one of his shoppers supplied an alibi.
Ms. Knox was initially discovered responsible of slandering him in 2009, and sentenced to a few years in jail, in a conviction that was upheld by numerous Italian courts.
In 2019, Europe’s prime human rights court docket dominated that Ms. Knox had been deprived of adequate legal assistance whereas being interrogated, violating her proper to a good trial, and ordered Italy to pay her 18,400 euros, or about $21,000 on the time, in damages, prices and bills. The court docket additionally raised questions in regards to the position of Ms. Knox’s interpreter, and stated that her statements through the interrogation “had been taken in an environment of intense psychological stress.”
Italy’s excessive court docket ordered a brand new slander trial primarily based on that ruling, however she was convicted once more by a Florence court last year. Her attraction was rejected on Thursday by the Rome-based Court docket of Cassation, Italy’s highest court docket.
Throughout the listening to on Thursday, Mr. Dalla Vedova, had stated that Mr. Lumumba had “not been a sufferer of Ms. Knox however alongside Ms. Knox.”
Luca Lupária Donati, one other of her legal professionals, stated they might wait to learn the court docket’s reasoning earlier than deciding whether or not to attraction once more to the European human rights court docket. “We’re curious to learn what they are saying,” he of Thursday’s ruling, because it “diminished what the European court docket had dominated.”
“That is one thing I discover very unjust for Amanda,” he stated.
Ms. Knox has spoken often on her podcast, Labyrinths, of the psychological and emotional toll that the conviction has taken on her. There have additionally been sensible results — she wrote on X this week that she lately needed to cancel a visit to Australia as she was unable to get a visa due to her “legal” background.
Since returning to america, Ms. Knox, now a mom of two, has turn into an advocate for individuals unjustly incarcercerated and a campaigner for legal justice reform. She can be co-producing a Hulu series about the case that’s at the moment being shot in Italy and Hungary.
Due to the accusation, Mr. Lumumba misplaced his enterprise, and he left Italy along with his household. He now lives in Krakow, Poland, the place he runs an import-export enterprise, however he misses his life in Perugia, he stated on the courthouse on Thursday.
He, too, stated he couldn’t wait to place the case behind him. The unending trials “all the time recall to mind that morning after they got here to arrest me, and the times in jail,” he stated.
Carlo Pacelli, his lawyer, stated Thursday that not solely had Ms. Knox by no means apologized for falsely accusing his consumer, she had by no means provided to make monetary amends.
In Florence final yr, Ms. Knox provided an apology of kinds, saying: “I’m very sorry I used to be not robust sufficient to withstand the stress of the police and that he suffered for it.”
After the decision, Mr. Pacelli stated his consumer may use the sentence to ask for damages, however that there might be insurmountable obstacles, “as a result of Amanda lives in america and it’s not simple to pursue.”
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