Years after Amanda Knox was acquitted of murdering 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher, an Italian court has found her guilty of slander for a second time.
Knox was originally found guilty of the 2007 murder in Perugia. In a "long legal saga" she and her former Italian boyfriend were "acquitted, found guilty again, and finally cleared" in 2015, said The Local Italy. Her 2011 conviction of slander, for blaming local bar owner Patrick Lumumba for Kercher's death, was quashed last year and a retrial ordered.
The "American cried in court in Florence" yesterday as she was found guilty. The 36-year-old mother of two said she was coerced into implicating Lumumba, describing the night of her interrogation by police as "the worst night of my life."
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"The police threatened me with 30 years in prison, an officer slapped me three times saying 'remember, remember'," she continued. "I'm very sorry that I wasn't strong enough to withstand the pressure from the police."
Lumumba spent two weeks in prison following Knox's questioning, before being released without charge after a bar customer provided an alibi. His lawyers said that despite the bar owner being cleared of police suspicion, Lumumba had lost his job and had his reputation ruined by the case. He "became known everywhere as the monster of Perugia".
Knox will not have to go to prison having already served four years behind bars. But failing in her "latest bid to escape the toxic magnetism of a story that continues to define her" will still be a "huge blow", said The Telegraph. "It was because she appealed the original slander conviction that she was back in court, once again staring down the barrel of the Italian justice system."
Knox's lawyers said they expect to appeal the verdict.
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