A day after she was reconvicted of slander in an Italian court, Amanda Knox spoke out on her podcast Thursday.
The only remaining conviction associated with the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, Knox was sentenced to three years for slandering Patrick Lumumba, a Congolese bar owner, in a written statement following the murder of her roommate. She is not expected to serve time, since she already served about four years before her murder conviction was overturned.
In an episode of her podcast, “Labyrinths,” Knox said the reconviction brought her back to how she felt during her 2009 murder trial.
“I’ve been here before — I’ve been in front of a judge and a jury, and I’ve poured my heart out to them before, hoping that I would be heard, and I’ve been torn down before,” she said.
In 2019, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Italian law enforcement officials violated Knox’s rights while interrogating her, which prompted the slander conviction to be tossed out and a new trial ordered.
Through a trembling voice on Wednesday, Knox addressed a Florence courtroom in Italian, speaking about why she wrote a statement to police naming Lumumba as her roommate’s killer. She didn’t intend to hurt Lumumba, who was “not only her employer” but also a friend who consoled her after her roommate’s death, but named him while exhausted and confused during extensive police questioning, she said.
In her podcast on Thursday, Knox said she was “confused” by the outcome of what she thought would be a “very straightforward proceeding,” and vowed to keep fighting.
“I, in no way, knowingly and willingly accused an innocent man. I was psychologically tortured by the police,” she said. “And even in the immediate aftermath of that, I attempted to do the right thing and I attempted to recant, and the police didn’t listen to me.”
Amanda Knox arrives with her husband Christopher Robinson (L) at the courthouse in Florence, on June 5, 2024.
Tiziana Fabi/AFP via Getty Images
Knox said Wednesday’s reconviction was a “huge step backwards” and felt like law enforcement officials just “wanted to find me guilty of something.”
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“I couldn’t be just an innocent person — like, I had to be to blame for everything that happened to me, instead of the country taking responsibility for what it had done,” she said on her podcast.
Knox reflected on being interrogated in 2007, saying it was the “worst night” of her life — even worse than the day she was convicted.
“I was already in a very terrifying situation. I mean, my friend had just been murdered, there was a killer on the loose and I was trying to help, and then [there were] people that I was relying on yelling at me and hitting me and telling me that I had witnessed something horrible and I couldn’t even remember it,” she said.
“At the very least when I was sentenced … I knew what the truth was. I knew that I was innocent and that this was wrong,” she said. “But in that night, I didn’t know what was true anymore, and I felt utterly destabilized.”
Knox said she feels grateful to her lawyers for standing by her, but expressed how painful it is to still be fighting for her innocence over a decade later.
“I was 20 years old when this happened, and I’ve just been living with this open wound and with this incredible stigma that comes from being accused of this crime, and all of the implications that follow, and I’m still living with it,” she said. “And I can live with it; I will survive this, and I’m gonna keep fighting it. But it’s hard.”
Amanda Knox, the American woman who was acquitted of murder charges in Italy in 2015, recently sat down for an interview to discuss her reconviction for slander in the same case. Knox, who spent four years in an Italian prison before being acquitted by the Supreme Court of Cassation, has been in the spotlight once again after being found guilty of slandering police officers during the investigation into the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher.
In the interview, Knox expressed her frustration and disbelief at being reconvicted for a crime she maintains she did not commit. She explained that she was coerced into making false statements by Italian police during the investigation, and that she was not given a fair trial.
Knox’s case has been a subject of international interest and controversy since she was first arrested in 2007. The murder of Meredith Kercher, a British exchange student who was found dead in her apartment in Perugia, Italy, sparked a media frenzy and led to a lengthy legal battle that captivated audiences around the world.
Despite being acquitted of murder charges, Knox’s legal troubles have continued to follow her. In addition to the recent slander conviction, she has also faced criticism for her behavior following her release from prison, including writing a memoir about her experience and appearing on various talk shows to discuss the case.
Many have questioned Knox’s motives and credibility, with some believing that she is guilty of the crimes she was accused of and others arguing that she was unfairly targeted by Italian authorities. The reconviction for slander has only added fuel to the fire, with some calling for her extradition back to Italy to serve her sentence.
Regardless of where one stands on the Amanda Knox case, it is clear that it continues to be a complex and divisive issue. As Knox herself stated in the interview, “I will never be free from this nightmare.” Only time will tell what the future holds for Amanda Knox and whether she will ever truly be able to move on from the events that have defined her life.
