Italian court reconvicts Amanda Knox of slander after exoneration of murder charges

An Italian appellate court reconvicted Amanda Knox of slander on Wednesday, a shock decision that was handed down several years after the American college student turned journalist was acquitted of murder charges, according to breaking news reports.

The one time exchange student from Seattle was previously charged, convicted and then acquitted in Italy of murdering her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, with her then Italian boyfriend of just a week, Raffaele Sollecito.

Both Knox and Kercher were exchange students in Italy at the time and the legal case has long captured the attention of journalists throughout the world.

The new decision, announced Wednesday by an Italian appeals court panel in Florence, was the sixth time a court in the European country has found Knox falsely accused an innocent Congolese man, Patrick Lumumba. Knox was working for Lumumba part time when the murder occurred at a local bar. She was a 20-year-old university student at the time.

The slander accusations filed by Italian prosecutors were predicated on two statements typed by police, which Knox signed while being questioned about Kercher’s murder.

The then university exchange student tried to recant her story in a four-page handwritten note the following afternoon, but her conflicting statements only raised suspicion with Italian police.

Knox’s appearance in the Florence appellate court was the first time she returned to an Italian courtroom since 2011, except this time, she was with her husband, Christopher Robinson.

As part of her defense, the American student turned journalist argued that she made the offending statements to law enforcement officials under duress as part of a long round of exhausting interrogations. She also attributed some of the purportedly defamatory statements to a language barrier since she spoke little Italian at the time.

Despite her best efforts to convince the panel of two judges and six jurors, the Italian appellate court confirmed a three-year prison sentence for the 36-year old married mother of two.

Knox will not be remanded to prison however since she already served four years in Italian custody during the Kercher murder investigation.

Knox showed no emotion when the verdict was read, and she looked sullen after she emerged from court. Her attorney, Carlo Dalla Vedova, told reporters outside the appellate court that “Amanda is very embittered” about the outcome. “We are all very surprised at the outcome of the decision.’'

Dalla Vedova added that Knox had expected an acquittal, and that it would finally close 17 years of haunting legal woes that arose in the European country for the young American.

In a shaky voice, Knox told the court she regretted wrongly accusing Patrick Lumumba under intense police pressure, but that she was frightened.

“I am very sorry that I was not strong enough to resist the pressure of police,″ Knox told the 8-panel jury as she spoke in Italian. “I didn’t know who the murderer was. I had no way to know.”

Kercher‘s murder in the mountainous town of Perugia immediately cast suspicion on Knox, who was a 20-year-old exchange student from Seattle. Police became suspicious when she and Sollecito began acting affectionate as police investigators were still investigating the crime scene.

They were also mystified when the 20-year old college student did a series of cartwheels at the police station in between questioning, a move she attributed to stress at the time.

Knox’s police interrogations, however, were just the first chapter of what unraveled into a whirlwind drama that would continue for 17 years.

For nearly two decade, the young Washington state resident would endure back and forth verdicts, all part of a European justice system that allows re-prosecution of criminal cases.