The final ruling has just concluded, and Amanda Knox was accused of the last remaining charge: slander against Patrick Lumumba. After 13 years, she returned to an Italian court, accompanied by her husband, Christopher. Amanda was sentenced to 3 years but will not go to prison.
Amanda Knox: “I did not expect it”
Despite many legal intricacies, doubts, and contradictions, Amanda Knox was officially acquitted of the murder charge in 2011. Free from all accusations, the former roommate of the victim, Meredith Kercher, has remained at the center of a great international debate over an unresolved mishap.
The Florence Court of Appeals has just confirmed the sentence for what happened on the night of November 1, 2007, in Via Pergola (Perugia). In the initial stages of the investigation, the woman pointed to Patrick Lumumba, her former employer, as the responsible party for the murder. Initially taken into custody for 14 days, Patrick was later acquitted.
Knox was initially convicted of slander in the first instance for one year, which was then increased to three years. In a subsequent slander trial, it was recognized that her statements were made under excessive pressure.
Today, the Florence Court of Appeals issued a new definitive sentence of three years against Amanda Knox for slander against Patrick Lumumba.
“I never wanted to slander Patrick. He was my friend, he took care of me and consoled me for the loss of my friend (Meredith Kercher). I’m sorry I couldn’t withstand the pressure and that he suffered.” These were Amanda’s words at the end of the sentence, speaking in a distressed and frightened Italian, disappointed and regretful.
From the reconstruction of the facts, Amanda named Patrick under the pressures and violence suffered during the interrogations. She did not seem to be aware of the facts and, in fear of the interrogation, pointed to him as the probable murderer.
Let’s briefly recap the steps
At 20 years old, Amanda Knox was the roommate (for just over a month) of 22-year-old Englishwoman Meredith Kercher, in Italy for an Erasmus project. On the night of November 1, at an unidentified time – 11/11:30 PM – Meredith was killed in her bed in her room in Via Pergola (Perugia).
Initially identified as the responsible parties were Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito (23 years old at the time of the murder, an informatics student), but soon the picture proved much more complex to compose. Among false statements, alleged violence and harassment during interrogations, contradictions of the accused, and interrogations without recordings or lawyers, the case went down in history as “the most significant judicial error of the twenty-first century.“
The reconstruction of the murder and the sentence
The reconstruction of the contorted and quite complex facts confirmed the murder was committed by Rudy Guede, sentenced to 16 years and arrested on November 20, 2007.
It is now established that the Ivorian entered the house for theft, broke the window of a trainee lawyer, who was absent at the time, and stole money, cell phones, and credit cards. Believing the house to be empty, once he encountered Meredith, he assaulted, raped, and then killed her (47 wounds were found, including 10 stab wounds). Leaving bloody footprints around the house, he fled clumsily and disposed of the cell phones in a nightclub. He then fled to Germany, where he was found about a month later.
Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito still served 4 years of pre-trial detention. For this reason, despite today’s sentence, the Amanda will not serve any penalty, free from all accusations except for slander.
