ROME (AP) — Amanda Knox has a last shot at clearing her identify of the final vestige of prison wrongdoing when Italy’s very best courtroom on Thursday hears her enchantment of a slander conviction for falsely accusing a Congolese bar proprietor within the 2007 homicide of her British flatmate.However the blameless guy she accused, Patrick Lumbumba, informed journalists out of doors Italy’s Cassation Courtroom that he hopes the conviction stands and “remains along with her for the remainder of her lifestyles.”The ruling will have to convey an finish to a sensational 17-year felony saga that noticed Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend convicted and acquitted in flip-flop verdicts in 21-year-old Meredith Kercher’s brutal homicide, prior to being exonerated via the very best Cassation Courtroom in 2015. The slander conviction in opposition to Knox remained the final felony stain in opposition to her. It survived more than one appeals, and Knox was once reconvicted at the price in June after a Ecu courtroom ruling that Italy had violated her human rights cleared the best way for a brand new trial.
Amanda is gazing the decision at house “assured and respectful of the justice machine as she at all times has been. She is assured that this tale will finish lately,” her protection legal professional Carlo Dalla Vedova informed journalists.
Knox mentioned lately on her “Labyrinths” podcast that “I hate the truth that I’ve to reside penalties for a criminal offense I didn’t devote.”Her protection group says she accused Lumumba, who hired her at a bar within the central Italian college the city of Perugia, all over a protracted night time of wondering and beneath power from police, who they mentioned fed her false knowledge. The Ecu Courtroom of Human Rights discovered that the police disadvantaged her of a legal professional and supplied a translator who acted extra as a mediator.
“I’ve been having nightmares about getting a nasty verdict and simply dwelling the remainder of my lifestyles with a shadow striking over me. It’s like a scarlet letter,’’ Knox mentioned on her podcast.
Although the prime courtroom upholds the conviction and three-year sentence, Knox does now not possibility to any extent further time she prison. She has already served just about 4 years all over the investigation, preliminary homicide trial and primary enchantment. Knox mentioned the purpose is to transparent her identify of all prison wrongdoing. “Residing with a false conviction is horrific, in my opinion, psychologically, emotionally,’’ she mentioned at the podcast. “I’m combating it, and we’ll see what occurs.”Knox returned to the USA in 2011, after being freed via an appeals courtroom in Perugia, and has established herself as a world campaigner for the wrongly convicted. She has a podcast along with her husband and has a brand new memoir popping out titled, “Unfastened: My Seek for Which means.” Knox returned to Italy in June for the decision within the slander trial, and Dalla Vedova mentioned on the time that she was once “very embittered” via the conviction.Knox was once a 20-year-old scholar within the central Italian college the city of Perugia when Kercher was once discovered stabbed to dying on Nov. 2, 2007, in her bed room within the condo they shared with two Italian ladies.The case made world headlines as suspicion temporarily fell on Knox and her boyfriend of simply days, Rafaelle Sollecito. After 8 years of trial, together with two appeals to Italy’s very best courtroom, they had been absolutely exonerated within the homicide in 2015.
Every other guy, Rudy Hermann Guede of the Ivory Coast, was once convicted of homicide after his DNA was once discovered on the crime scene. He was once freed in 2021, after serving maximum of his 16-year sentence. The Ecu courtroom ordered Italy to pay Knox damages for the police disasters, noting she was once specifically inclined as a overseas scholar now not fluent in Italian.Italy’s prime courtroom ordered the brand new slander trial in keeping with that ruling. It threw out two signed statements drafted via police falsely accusing Lumumba within the homicide, and directed the appellate courtroom that the one proof it would imagine was once a hand-written letter she later wrote in English making an attempt to stroll again the accusation.Alternatively, the appellate courtroom in its reasoning mentioned that the four-page memo supported a slander discovering.At the foundation of Knox’s statements, Lumumba was once introduced in for wondering, regardless of having an ironclad alibi. His trade suffered, and he in the end moved to Poland along with his Polish spouse. Arriving at courtroom, he underlined that Knox “hasn’t ever apologized to me.”___Barry reported from Milan.
