Amanda Knox was back in an Italian court today, attending a hearing of the re-trial of a calumny case against her in Florence.
The case regards a three-year-term, which Knox has already served, for ‘pointing the finger’ at former bar owner Patrick Lumumba in relation to the murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia.
Knox initially identified Congo-born Lumumba over the 1st November 2007 murder in the Umbrian city of the 21-year-old British exchange student. The American and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were first convicted of the murder. They were eventually acquitted after almost four years in jail.
The 36-year-old writer filed the appeal to definitively annul the calumny sentence. This followed a European Court of Human Rights ruling that her defence rights were violated during the initial investigation.
In October Italy’s supreme Court of Cassation overturned the conviction and ordered a retrial.
Knox calumny conviction
Knox arrived at the hearing with her husband Chris Robinson and her lawyers.
She did not say anything to the throng of reporters outside the courthouse, but one of her lawyers said she would address the court.
Her lawyers say she was the victim of a violation of the rights of a defendant and of a media trial and should be acquitted.
Lumumba is a civil plaintiff in the trial and his lawyer has asked for the calumny conviction to be reinstated.
Knox and Sollecito were arrested five days after the murder and convicted by a court of first instance, but this conviction was subsequently overturned.
The appeal sentence was then thrown out by the Court of Cassation, Italy’s supreme court, which ordered a new trial on appeal leading to their re-conviction in 2014. Knox and Sollecito were eventually acquitted definitively by the supreme court the following year.
Rudy Guede, an Ivorian, was convicted and sentenced to 16 years for the murder. He was released from prison in November 2021 after serving 13 years. In February, a court ordered him to be placed under special surveillance after he was found guilty of beating his ex-girlfriend.
