Amanda Knox insisted she is a "victim" and did not slander anyone after losing her bid to overturn the conviction in Italy this week.
The 36-year-old American was convicted in 2009 of slander for falsely accusing Patrick Lumumba of murdering fellow student Meredith Kercher in the Italian city of Perugia. A court in Florence upheld that conviction on Wednesday.
Knox, her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and Ivory Coast native Rudy Guede were convicted of the murder in 2009. While Knox and Mr Sollecito were later exonerated, Guede served 13 years of a 16-year sentence.
In an interview with Sky TG24, Knox said she had "nothing to hide," adding: "I've had to spend my whole life fighting and defending myself."
Holding back tears, Knox said she had been "unjustly accused for 17 years... my entire adult life" and that "from the beginning I just wanted... to tell the truth," adding: "Sometimes I think there's nothing I can do but I'll try forever."
Lumumba, the Congolese owner of the bar where Knox worked part-time as a 20-year-old university student, was a central figure in the case.
Dubbed "Foxy Knoxy" by some media outlets, Knox and her former Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were found guilty of the murder in 2009.
Both were cleared of the fatal stabbing of the Croydon-born exchange student in 2011 and were later completely exonerated by Italy's highest court in 2015.
Knox served four years in prison before being released in October 2011, after an appeals court overturned the guilty verdict.
Speaking to Sky News' producer Simone Baglivo, Knox said: "I'm not Foxy Knoxy, I'm Amanda Knox.
"I am a victim."
She recalled that at age 20, she became the "most hated girl accused of murder in the whole world" and had to "spend my whole life fighting and defending myself."
"I just wanted to live my life. I survived," she added.
Knox, from Seattle, described Wednesday's court verdict as "unfair" and "not correct," and vowed to appeal to Italy's supreme court.
She said she was "really disappointed" and "upset" but remained "determined," adding she "will never stop telling the truth."
As a result of Knox's comments during a police interrogation following the killing, Lumumba spent two weeks behind bars.
Knox said: "I didn't slander Patrick; I didn't kill my friend [Meredith]. I will come back here as many times as I have to fight against this injustice."
She claimed that during her initial police questioning over the killing, she was "psychologically tortured, abused and mistreated" by officers.
"It was the worst experience of my life. They made me think I was crazy," she added.
During an interrogation, Knox had accused Lumumba of Ms Kercher's murder. This week in court in Florence, she argued that her slander conviction should be overturned due to her treatment by officers.
In 2016, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that this interrogation violated Knox's rights because she was questioned without a lawyer or official translator. Last November, Italy's top court threw out the slander conviction and ordered a retrial.
