Amanda Knox faces another trial for slander this week in Italy in a case that could remove the last legal stain against her, nine years after Italy’s highest court threw out her conviction for the murder of her 21-year-old British roommate.
Knox, who was a 20-year-old student when she was accused along with her then-boyfriend of murdering Meredith Kercher in 2007, has built a life back in the United States as an advocate, writer, podcaster and producer — with much of her work drawing on her experience.
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Despite a definitive ruling by Italy’s Cassation Court in 2015 that Knox and then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito did not commit the crime, and the conviction of another man whose DNA was at the scene, doubts persist about Knox’s role with the victim’s family and the man she wrongly accused.
She may well have ‘retrieved’ a false memory because the police were haranguing her about some texts with Lumumba but it was a lot more than her mentioning his name in passing. She signed two confessions saying that she had been in another room of the house while Lumumba murdered Meredith. Those confessions are considered inadmissible. This trial is about whether she did, in fact, slander him or whether it was entirely due to police pressure.
If I recall, the first confession wasn’t even written by her. She just signed it. Either way, the whole investigation was so shoddy we may never know the full truth.
It’s always the police who write up what you say, then they ask you to sign it. They wrote up what she said and she signed it. The following day she wrote a long letter saying that she didn’t think it was true because she’s been under duress. That is why the conviction for slander has been quoshed and this new trial is now happening.
Listen, as an Italian my recommendation for anyone: don’t speak to police until a lawyer is present. Just don’t.
You don’t have to be an Italian for that advice to be good.