MILAN (AP) — Amanda Knox faces every other trial for slander this week in Italy in a case that might take away the closing prison stain in opposition to her 8 years after Italy’s best possible court docket threw out her conviction for the homicide of her 21-year-old British roommate.Knox, who was once a 20-year-old scholar when she was once accused together with her then-boyfriend of murdering Meredith Kercher in 2007, has constructed a existence again in america as an suggest, author, podcaster and manufacturer — with a lot of her paintings drawing on her revel in.Now 36 and the mummy of 2 babies, Knox campaigns for felony justice reform and to lift consciousness about pressured confessions. She has recorded a chain on resilience for a meditation app and has a podcast along with her husband, Christopher Robinson, and an upcoming mini-series on her struggles throughout the Italian prison device for Hulu that has Monica Lewinsky as an govt manufacturer.
In spite of a definitive ruling by means of Italy’s Cassation Court docket in 2015 that Knox and then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito didn’t devote the crime, and the conviction of every other guy whose DNA was once on the scene, doubts persist about Knox’s position, particularly in Italy.
This is in large part because of the slander conviction for wrongly accusing a Congolese bar proprietor within the homicide, which was once showed by means of the best possible court docket in 2015. That conviction was once best thrown out closing November in line with a Eu Court docket of Human Rights ruling that discovered Knox’s rights were violated in a protracted evening of wondering and not using a legal professional and professional translator.
Even now, Knox isn’t positive {that a} now not in charge verdict within the new trial, which opens Wednesday in Florence, will convince her detractors.“At the one hand, I’m satisfied I’ve this opportunity to transparent my title, and optimistically that may remove the stigma that I’ve been dwelling with,’’ Knox, who didn’t reply to an interview request, mentioned on her podcast Labyrinths in December.
“However, I don’t know if it ever will, in the best way I’m nonetheless traumatized by means of it. I’m positive other folks will nonetheless cling it in opposition to me as a result of they don’t wish to perceive what took place, they usually don’t wish to settle for that an blameless particular person will also be gaslit and coerced into what I went via.”Knox mentioned on her podcast that she expects to testify, however her legal professional mentioned she isn’t anticipated in court docket for opening day.The Kercher circle of relatives legal professional, Francesco Maresca, mentioned the prime court docket’s exoneration did little in his thoughts to dispel doubts following Knox’s conviction by means of a tribulation court docket and two appeals courts, the primary confirming her sentence of 26 years and the second one elevating it to twenty-eight ½ years.“This trial by no means ends,’’ Maresca instructed The Related Press, obscuring “the reminiscence of deficient Meredith, who’s at all times remembered for those procedural sides and now not as a scholar and younger lady.”Amongst his doubts, Maresca cited Knox’s at a loss for words retraction of her accusation in opposition to the Congolese bar proprietor, Patrick Lumumba, and the decision in Rudy Guede’s conviction for killing Kercher that maintains that the Ivorian guy didn’t act by myself.
Now 36, Guede was once launched from jail in 2021 after serving 13 years of a 16-year time period passed down in a fast-track trial. Guede was once not too long ago ordered to put on a tracking bracelet and now not depart his house at evening after an ex-girlfriend accused him of bodily and sexual abuse. An investigation is ongoing.Knox’s new trial will admit only one piece of proof: her four-page handwritten observation that the court docket will read about to peer if it accommodates parts to give a boost to slander in opposition to Lumumba. He was once held in prison for 2 weeks earlier than police launched him. Lumumba has since left Italy.Two previous statements typed up by means of police that Knox signed within the wee hours of Nov. 7, 2007 that contained the accusation, and have been regarded as probably the most incriminating, were dominated inadmissible by means of Italy’s best possible court docket.The four-page letter, which she wrote in the similar 53-hour span of wondering over 4 days beginning Nov. 6, displays any individual in a state of bewilderment seeking to reconcile what police have instructed her along with her personal memories.
“With regard to this ‘confession’ that I made closing evening, I wish to shed light on that I’m very unsure of the verity of my statements as a result of they have been made beneath the pressures of tension, surprise and excessive exhaustion,’’ Knox wrote.She referred to police statements that she can be arrested and jailed for 30 years and that Sollecito was once turning in opposition to her.Lauria Baldassare, an Italian legal professional who based the Innocents Challenge, mentioned the subject of wrongful convictions in Italy is beginning to “create social alarm because it assumes vital dimensions.” He cited 10 circumstances of defendants being paid damages for wrongful convictions during the last decade, however mentioned they confronted problem in escaping the stigma in their preliminary in charge verdict.“There may be nonetheless a part of the general public opinion that doesn’t settle for the Court docket of Cassation’s resolution, and those debates turn into a recreation,’’ mentioned Baldassare, whose group is impartial from the Innocence Challenge that Knox works with. ”Italy does now not have the adulthood to simply accept an exoneration, as a result of social prejudices are more potent than the discovering.”
