Amanda Knox Cries After Having Slander Conviction Reinstated In Italy

Amanda Knox broke down in tears during an Italian television interview this week, insisting she had “nothing to hide” after failing to overturn her slander conviction related to the 2007 murder of her British roommate.

The 36-year-old Knox became choked up as she told Sky TG24 that she has been “unjustly accused for 17 years… my entire adult life.”

“From the beginning I just wanted to do the right thing and tell the truth,” Knox said, adding that she is a “victim” with “nothing to hide.”

Knox also became audibly emotional on her podcast Labyrinths, saying she has “been here before” pouring her heart out in court only to be “torn down.”

She expressed confusion over last week’s ruling by Italy’s highest court, which reinstated her slander conviction for falsely accusing bar owner Patrick Lumumba of killing her 21-year-old roommate Meredith Kercher. Knox’s three-year sentence was considered served after four years in prison.

Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were initially convicted but then acquitted by 2015 of the Leeds University student’s death in the university town of Perugia.

Shortly after her 2007 arrest at age 20, Knox accused Lumumba of the stabbing after being questioned for hours without a lawyer. She retracted the statement hours later, saying it was made under “pressure of stress, shock and extreme exhaustion.”

“The police threatened me with 30 years in prison, an officer slapped me three times saying ‘Remember, remember,'” Knox told the court last week, alleging police wanted her to pin the crime on Lumumba.

Lumumba was jailed for two weeks but then excluded as a suspect.

The judges criticized the slander conviction, ruling it was a violation of Knox’s human rights to be questioned without representation. But they ultimately reinstated it, crediting her three-year sentence as completed with time served.

On her podcast, Knox, now a mother of two living in Seattle, said she carries “this open wound” 17 years later.

“I was 20 when this happened…I’ve just been living with this incredible stigma,” she said. “I will survive this, and I’m gonna keep fighting it. But it’s hard.