Amanda Knox returned to an Italian courtroom on Wednesday for the first time in 12-and-a-half years, clearing herself “once and for all” from the libel charges that continued to linger after she was acquitted of the brutal 2007 murder of her British roommate in the picturesque hilltop town of Perugia.
The murder of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher made headlines around the world as suspicion fell on Knox, a 20-year-old exchange student from Seattle, and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, who she had been dating for only a week.
The ever-changing verdicts over a nearly eight-year legal process have divided opinion among trial observers on both sides of the Atlantic, and the case has sparked fierce debate on social media even though it is still in its early stages.
In a sign of the continuing heat surrounding the case, cameras were focused on Knox, her husband, Christopher Robinson, and their defense team as they entered the courtroom about an hour before the hearing was set to begin.
Her lawyer, Luca Ruparia Donati, said the camera hit her on her left temple. Knox’s husband, sitting in the front row of the courtroom, examined a small swelling on her head.
Knox is expected to testify in court and a sentence is expected to be handed down later Wednesday, her lawyer said.
Years later, despite Knox’s exoneration and the conviction of an Ivorian man whose footprints and DNA were found at the scene, doubts about her role persist, particularly in Italy, mainly due to the allegations she made against a Congolese bar owner where she worked part-time, which led to her conviction for libel.
Knox, now 36 and a mother of two young children, is returning to Italy for the second time since she was released in October 2011 after four years in prison after the Perugia Appeal Court overturned her original murder convictions against both Knox and Sollecito.
She remained in the US, despite two further overturns of her conviction, until March 2015, when Italy’s highest court acquitted the pair of murder charges, declaring they had committed no crime.
“I will be walking into the very courtroom where I was convicted again of a crime I did not commit, this time in self-defense,” Knox wrote on social media. “I seek to fully clear my name from the false accusations made against me. Best of luck.”
Knox’s court date was set by a European Court ruling that found Italy violated her human rights during marathon interrogations over several days after Kercher’s murder, when she was given neither a lawyer nor a competent interpreter.
In the fall, Italy’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, quashed a five-trial defamation conviction and ordered a new trial, under a 2022 reform of Italy’s judicial system that allows cases with final rulings to be reopened if human rights violations are found.
This time, the court was ordered to disregard two damaging statements that police typed and Knox signed at 1:45 a.m. and 5:45 a.m. while she was being questioned throughout the night, into the early hours of November 6, 2007.
In her affidavit, Knox said she remembered hearing Kercher screaming and named Patrick Lumumba, the owner of the bar where she worked, as the killer.
A few hours later, around 1 p.m., while still in custody, she asked for pen and paper and wrote her statement in English, questioning the document she had signed.
“Regarding this ‘confession’ I made last night, I want to be clear that the veracity of what I said is highly questionable as I made it under pressure of stress, shock and extreme fatigue,” she wrote.
Whatever the outcome, Knox is not at risk of prison: the four years he served before his initial acquittal cover the three-year sentence for the defamation charge.
