An Italian appeals court has upheld a defamation conviction against American Amanda Knox over claims she made accusing police officials of roughing her up during her interrogation for her roommate's 2007 murder. Knox received a 3-year sentence, upholding the lower court's claim, but her time in prison before will retroactively count as a concurrent sentencing.
In the latest trial, which was in a civil case, the 34-year-old Knox was convicted of slandering Patrick Lumumba, a bar owner, in the murder case of her roommate, British student Meredith Kercher, in 2009 while she was studying in Italy.
During her efforts to overturn the slander conviction, she claimed that multiple Italian police officials of slapping, screaming at, and intimidating her when she was questioned over the murder of Kercher after her body was found in the apartment Knox shared with Kercher. Knox and her then-boyfriend were initially convicted of Kercher's murder in 2009, but Italy's highest court dismissed those convictions in 2015.
Prosecutors alleged that Knox's claims that police roughed her up were untrue and slandered the reputation of the Italian police. Knox, who has returned to the United States after her acquittal in 2015, did not appear in person for the hearing. Her defense plans to appeal the slander conviction yet again to Italy's highest court. Knox has always maintained she was innocent in Kercher's murder and was forced into falsely accusing herself and others due to police coercion during her lengthy questioning.
The Kercher murder and Knox's legal battles for nearly a decade have been highly publicized internationally. While Knox was ultimately acquitted of the more serious murder charges, this slander case demonstrates the difficulty in fully overcoming serious criminal allegations even after being exonerated at trial.
