Amanda Knox convicted of slander in Italy for wrongly accusing innocent man of murder

American author and activist Amanda Knox on Wednesday, who was wrongly convicted of murdering her roommate in Italy in 2007, was reconvicted of slander by an Italian court after she accused an innocent man of killing her roommate instead.

Knox, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for her roommate's murder, was released from a prison in Italy in 2015 after she was exonerated by Italy's highest court, the Supreme Court of Cassation, according to NBC News. Although she was exonerated on the murder charge after four years in prison, a slander charge was still on her file after she told police that the killer was Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba. But Rudy Hermann Guede was later convicted of the crime.

Knox's former boyfriend Raffele Sollecito was also convicted and later exonerated in the murder of Knox's British roommate Meredith Kercher. Both Knox and Kercher were exchange students in Italy at the time.

Knox was sentenced to three years in prison for the slander conviction, but she will not spend any more time in an Italian jail because it counts as time already served. The former American exchange student reportedly wept when the verdict was delivered, per NBC.

“I am very sorry that I was not strong enough to resist the pressure of police,” Knox said in prepared statement, The Hill reported. “I didn’t know who the murderer was. I had no way to know.”

The slander charge was based on two statements written statements from Knox that were actually typed up by police officers, which Knox signed without a lawyer or translator present. But the Italy Supreme Court, which ordered the retrial, instructed the jury to only consider a handwritten statement from Knox that was composed in English and written hours after she was interrogated.  

Knox accused the police of violating her human rights in their interrogation of her, claiming she was interrogated in a language that she "barely knew," and was pressured to remember things. 

“When I couldn’t remember the details, one of the officers gave me a little smack on the head and shouted, ‘remember, remember,’” Knox said. “And then I put together a jumble of memories and the police made me sign a statement. I was forced to submit. It had been a violation of my rights. I was a scared girl, deceived by the police and led not to trust her own memories."

A lawyer for Knox said his client was "very upset" at the verdict in the slander case, and claimed he was "very surprised" she was convicted given the circumstances.