Knox's slander conviction upheld from Kercher case

Amanda Knox has been re-convicted of slander in an Italian court after accusing an innocent man of the murder of her roommate in 2007.

- AMELIA NEATH & MIKE BEDIGAN

Knox – who was jailed for the murder before being exonerated – arrived at the Florence court yesterday in an attempt to overturn a conviction for slander in the last outstanding case against her. The 36-year-old spent four years in jail for the murder of her flatmate Meredith Kercher, while the two were exchange students, before her conviction was later annulled in 2015.

She appeared in court yesterday for a retrial for a different aspect of the case – falsely accusing a Congolese bar owner named Patrick Lumumba of the crime – and was found by the court to have wrongly accused him. However, Knox will not serve any more time in jail, as the three-year sentence she was originally given in the slander case was already covered by the time she previously served.

Knox appeared to be in tears while arriving, and was jostled – and apparently hit in the head by a camera – by members of the media who mobbed her as she entered the Italian courtroom for the first time in over a decade. Yet, by the time the verdict was read aloud, she showed no visible emotion. Her lawyer, Carlo della Vedova, said shortly afterwards, that: “Amanda is very embittered.”