Italian Court Upholds Amanda Knox's 2024 Slander Conviction for Falsely Accusing Bar Owner of Murder

Italy’s highest court has upheld Amanda Knox’s 2024 slander conviction for falsely accusing a Congolese bar owner of murdering her British roommate in Italy in 2007 while she was under aggressive police questioning.

On Thursday, Jan. 23, the Supreme Court of Cassation in Rome, handed down the ruling, the Associated Press reports. Knox watched the verdict at home in the U.S.

The bar owner, Patrick Lumumba, said he was satisified with the verdict. “Amanda was wrong. This sentence has to accompany her for the rest of her life,″ he told AP.

In June 2024, Knox — who was found guilty of killing her roommate Meredith Kercher and then later acquitted — was convicted once more for wrongly accusing Lumumba of killing her roommate. She appealed the conviction.

Knox and Lumumba recently presented their cases during a two-hour hearing, the AP reported. The Court of Cassation began deliberating on Thursday, Jan. 23.

Knox will not do any more jail time, though, because she was credited for the time she served behind bars after the initial murder conviction, AP reports.

Knox was a 20-year-old exchange student in Perugia on November 1, 2007, when Kercher, 21, was found murdered in her bedroom with more than 40 stab wounds and a deep gash in her throat. She had also been sexually assaulted.

Knox and her boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, were arrested five days later for the murder. After a sensational 11-month trial, Knox and Sollecito were convicted in the brutal killing.

Knox spent four years in prison while fighting the conviction.

In 2011, she and Sollecito won an appeal and were freed and cleared of most charges.

In a second appeals in 2014, Knox was once again found guilty of murdering Kercher, and sentenced to 28 1/2 years in prison. Sollecito was also found guilty and was sentenced to 25 years.

The following year, in yet another legal flip flop, the pair was officially exonerated by the Cassation Court, PEOPLE previously reported.

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After Kercher’s murder, Knox – who didn’t speak fluent Italian – was questioned for 53 hours by Italian police, wherein she accused Lumumba of murdering her roommate, signing statements typed up by police, the AP reported.

She recanted the accusation in a four-page handwritten note the next day, the AP reports.

Even though she took back her accusation, police took Lumumba into custody for questioning, holding him for nearly two weeks, the AP reports.

He was finally released after someone came forward with an alibi for him, according to The Guardian.

At the time, Knox’s lawyers argued that she made the accusation against Lumumba because she was under duress and didn’t have an interpreter or legal assistance at the time, The Guardian reported.

In 2016, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that her rights had been violated during her interrogation, the AP reports.

As a result, Knox appealed the slander conviction. The Court of Cassation annulled the slander conviction, CBS News reports.

In 2024, the Court of Cassation ordered a retrial on the slander charges, during which she was found guilty. She appealed the conviction and her three-year sentence.

In 2008, a man named Rudy Guede was convicted of murdering Kercher. He was released from prison in 2021.