Amanda Knox faces a brand new slander trial in Italy that would take away the final authorized stain towards her

MILAN (AP) — Amanda Knox faces one other trial for slander this week in Italy in a case that would take away the final authorized stain towards her eight years after Italy’s highest court threw out her conviction for the homicide of her 21-year-old British roommate.

Knox, who was a 20-year-old scholar when she was accused alongside along with her then-boyfriend of murdering Meredith Kercher in 2007, has constructed a life again in the US as an advocate, author, podcaster and producer — with a lot of her work drawing on her expertise.

Now 36 and the mom of two babies, Knox campaigns for legal justice reform and to lift consciousness about pressured confessions. She has recorded a sequence 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 authorized system for Hulu that has Monica Lewinsky as an government producer.

Regardless of a definitive ruling by Italy’s Cassation Courtroom in 2015 that Knox and then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito didn’t commit the crime, and the conviction of one other man whose DNA was on the scene, doubts persist about Knox’s position, particularly in Italy.

That’s largely as a result of slander conviction for wrongly accusing a Congolese bar proprietor within the homicide, which was confirmed by the best courtroom in 2015. That conviction was solely thrown out final November primarily based on a European Court of Human Rights ruling that discovered Knox’s rights had been violated in a protracted evening of questioning and not using a lawyer and official translator.

Even now, Knox isn’t positive {that a} not responsible verdict within the new trial, which opens Wednesday in Florence, will persuade her detractors.

“On the one hand, I’m glad I’ve this opportunity to clear my title, and hopefully that can take away 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 it. I’m positive folks will nonetheless maintain it towards me as a result of they don’t need to perceive what occurred, they usually don’t need to settle for that an harmless particular person could be gaslit and coerced into what I went by way of.”

Knox mentioned on her podcast that she expects to testify, however her lawyer mentioned she will not be anticipated in courtroom for opening day.

The Kercher household lawyer, Francesco Maresca, mentioned the excessive courtroom’s exoneration did little in his thoughts to dispel doubts following Knox’s conviction by a trial courtroom and two appeals courts, the primary confirming her sentence of 26 years and the second elevating it to twenty-eight ½ years.

“This trial by no means ends,’’ Maresca instructed The Related Press, obscuring “the reminiscence of poor Meredith, who’s all the time remembered for these procedural points and never as a scholar and younger lady.”

Amongst his doubts, Maresca cited Knox’s confused retraction of her accusation towards the Congolese bar proprietor, Patrick Lumumba, and the decision in Rudy Guede’s conviction for killing Kercher that maintains that the Ivorian man didn’t act alone.

Now 36, Guede was launched from prison in 2021 after serving 13 years of a 16-year time period handed down in a fast-track trial. Guede was recently ordered to put on a monitoring bracelet and never depart his residence 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 assertion that the courtroom will study to see if it incorporates parts to assist slander towards Lumumba. He was held in jail for 2 weeks earlier than police launched him. Lumumba has since left Italy.

Two earlier statements typed up by police that Knox signed within the wee hours of Nov. 7, 2007 that contained the accusation, and have been thought-about probably the most incriminating, have been dominated inadmissible by Italy’s highest courtroom.

The four-page letter, which she wrote in the identical 53-hour span of questioning over 4 days beginning Nov. 6, displays somebody in a state of confusion attempting to reconcile what police have instructed her along with her personal recollections.

“With reference to this ‘confession’ that I made final evening, I need to clarify that I’m very uncertain of the verity of my statements as a result of they have been made below the pressures of stress, shock and excessive exhaustion,’’ Knox wrote.

She referred to police statements that she can be arrested and jailed for 30 years and that Sollecito was turning towards her.

Lauria Baldassare, an Italian lawyer who based the Innocents Undertaking, mentioned the subject of wrongful convictions in Italy is beginning to “create social alarm because it assumes essential dimensions.” He cited 10 instances of defendants being paid damages for wrongful convictions during the last decade, however mentioned they confronted problem in escaping the stigma of their preliminary responsible verdict.

“There may be nonetheless a part of the general public opinion that doesn’t settle for the Courtroom of Cassation’s determination, and these debates turn out to be a sport,” mentioned Baldassare, whose group is impartial from the Innocence Undertaking that Knox works with. ”Italy doesn’t have the maturity to just accept an exoneration, as a result of social prejudices are stronger than the discovering.”