Italy’s high court has upheld the remaining conviction against American Amanda Knox, who was jailed and later acquitted of the 2007 murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher. Knox was convicted of slandering her former boss Patrick Lumumba by falsely accusing him of Kercher’s murder. Knox, 20 at the time, signed two statements prepared by police regarding her accusation against Lumumba. She later wrote a handwritten note questioning her false accusation. Lumumba was arrested after Knox’s accusation and spent two weeks in jail until police released him due to lack of forensic evidence. He blames the arrest on his losing his club Le Chic, which closed shortly after.
In a long legal saga, Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of Kercher’s murder after her body was found at the student apartment she shared with Knox in Puglia. The two were acquitted, then reconvicted before being definitively acquitted in 2015. However, the slander conviction remained. Knox petitioned the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 2023 that her rights were violated during the 2007 interrogation that led to her false accusation against Lumumba.
