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Amanda Knox: Who is she and why was she back in court? |

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It has been more than 16 years since Meredith Kercher was murdered in Italy and Amanda Knox was accused of being responsible.

The American woman was eventually cleared of the brutal 2007 murder of her flatmate, 21-year-old Ms Kercher, in the apartment they shared in the Italian university town of Perugia.

But she was only released in 2011 after four years in prison in Italy.

Knox returned to court for a slander trial in 2024 where she hoped to fully clear her name – but she failed to overturn the last conviction against her.

Sky News looks at the latest legal development and how it got to this point.

Why is Amanda Knox back in court?

The latest trial relates to a slander conviction after Knox wrongly accused a Congolese bar owner, Patrick Lumumba, of the murder during an interrogation.

During a long night of questioning in the aftermath of Ms Kercher’s murder, in which Knox did not have a lawyer or qualified translator, she accused her employer.

The police typed two statements including the accusation, which she signed.

She recanted in a four-page handwritten note the next afternoon, but the memo showed her confusion as she attempted to reconcile the signed statements with her own conflicting recollections.

While Knox was acquitted of murder by Italy’s highest court in 2015, her conviction for slander against Mr Lumumba was not rescinded.

Image:
Patrick Lumumba in 2015. Pic: AP

A year later, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled a long night of questioning days after Ms Kercher’s murder violated Knox’s rights because she was questioned without a lawyer or official translator.

In light of this, Italy’s Supreme Court overturned the slander conviction last year and ordered a retrial.

The new trial focused on just one piece of eence: her four-page handwritten statement.

The court examined this to see if it constituted slander against Mr Lumumba, who spent two weeks in jail after the murder accusation.

The Italian court found Knox guilty of slander and issued a three-year sentence.

She will not serve any more jail time as the sentence counts as time she has already served in prison.

Image:
Amanda Knox arrives flanked by her husband Christopher Robinson, right, at the Florence courtroom. Pic: Reuters

The murder, convictions and acquittal

Ms Kercher, an exchange student from London, was stabbed to death on 1 November 2007.

She was found half-naked in their flat, having been sexually assaulted. Her throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.

Suspicion fell on 20-year-old Knox and her then boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.

Image:
British exchange student Meredith Kercher

Prosecutors alleged the pair carried out the killing with small-time drug dealer Rudy Guede.

In their initial trial in 2009, Knox had been sentenced to 28 and a half years in prison and Sollecito to 25 years. They were acquitted of the crime in 2011 after spending four years in prison.

They were exonerated completely in 2015 when Italy’s top criminal court ruled there was a lack of biological eence against them.

Guede was convicted of murder and given a 30-year jail term in October 2008. He was released in 2021 after an Italian court ruled he could complete his term doing community service.

‘I became the dirty, psychopathic, man-eating Foxy Knoxy’

Speaking on her first return to Italy since her acquittal in 2019, Knox recalled her time in prison and the way the case was sensationalised in the media.

“It was impossible for me to have a fair trial,” she claimed, recalling how in the eyes of many she had become “the dirty, psychopathic, man-eating Foxy Knoxy”.

Image:
Amanda Knox speaks at a criminal justice festival in 2019. Pic: AP

While many defended her as an innocent victim caught in a judicial nightmare abroad, in Italy she was portrayed as an angel-faced man-eater.

“They convicted that doppelganger. That person was sentenced to 26 years in jail,” she said.

“The verdict fell upon me like a crushing weight,” she added.

“I could only suffer in silence from my prison cell.”

What is Amanda Knox doing now?

Now aged 36 and the mother of two children, Knox campaigns for criminal justice reform and against forced confessions, drawing on her experience.

She has a podcast and a new limited series in development for Hulu that includes Monica Lewinsky among the executive producers.

She also has recorded a series on resilience for a meditation app.

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