VINCENZO PINTO/AFP
Amanda Knox will be back in court in Italy on Wednesday in a slander case, related to her infamous jailing and later acquittal for the murder of her British roommate in 2007.
The American was only 20 when she and her Italian then-boyfriend were arrested for the brutal killing of 21-year-old fellow student Meredith Kercher at the girls' shared home in Perugia.
The murder began a long legal saga where Knox was found guilty, acquitted, found guilty again and finally cleared of all charges in 2015.
But she still had a related conviction for slander, for blaming the murder on a local bar owner during initial questioning by police.
In October, Italy's highest court threw out that conviction on appeal and ordered a retrial, which began earlier this year in Florence without the in-court presence of Knox.
But she is expected to attend a hearing Wednesday morning, appearing in the same courtroom where she was re-convicted of murder in 2014, and where her lawyers are also expecting a verdict.
On June 5th, I will walk into the very same courtroom where I was reconvicted of a crime I didn't commit, this time to defend myself yet again. I hope to clear my name once and for all of the false charges against me. Wish me luck. Crepi il lupo!
— Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) June 3, 2024
Both parties will be able to appeal the verdict, however.
The case attracted global media interest, much of it salacious, focusing on prosecutors' claims that Kercher died as part of a sex game gone wrong.
But Italy's highest court, when it acquitted Knox and former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito once and for all, said there had been "major flaws" in the police investigation.
One person remains convicted of Kercher's murder -- Ivorian Rudy Guede, who was linked to the scene by DNA evidence.
He was sentenced in 2008 to 30 years for murder and sexual assault, his sentence was later reduced on appeal to 16 years.
Guede was released early in November 2021.
Kercher's half-naked body was found in a pool of blood inside the roommates' cottage in November 2007. Her throat had been slit and she had suffered multiple stab wounds.
During police questioning, Knox implicated Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba, who then spent almost two weeks behind bars before being released without charge.
Knox was convicted of slandering him in 2011 and sentenced to three years already served.
But she said she was yelled at and slapped during the police investigation, claims that prompted a separate charge of slandering police, of which she was cleared in 2016.
She petitioned the European Court of Human Rights, which in 2019 ruled that Knox had not been provided with adequate legal representation or a professional interpreter during her interrogation.
That ruling, which found her treatment "compromised the fairness of the proceedings as a whole", was cited by Italy's top court last year when it ordered the retrial.
"Though I was exonerated for murder, I remained wrongly convicted of slander," Knox wrote last October.
She added that at the time of Kercher's murder, the bar owner Lumumba "was my friend".
"We are both victims of the violation of my human rights during my interrogation, without which I was helpless against the coercive pressure of the police."
Now 36 and married with two young children, Knox is a journalist, author and campaigner for criminal justice reform.
She returned to Italy five years ago to address a conference on wrongful convictions, appearing on a panel entitled "Trial By Media".
© Agence France-Presse
