Amanda Knox has lashed out at the Italian justice system following a recent decision by an Italian court to uphold her conviction for slander. In a lengthy X (formerly Twitter) post on August 14, 2024, she accused the Italian legal system of “gaslighting” her and bending the truth.
Knox is referring to a 35-page court judgment by an Italian court. The judgment refused to void an earlier court’s decision to convict her for slander. The case resulted from the 2007 killing of Amanda Knox’s roommate, Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old British student in Italy.
What Happened to Amanda Knox?
After finding Kercher’s lifeless body in her room, Italian Police grilled Amanda Knox for more than two days. During the interrogation, she signed a statement accusing Patrick Lumumba, a Congolese bar owner, of the crime. At the time, she also worked for Lumumba. Hence, police detained Lumumba for two weeks in 2007 before they let him go.
Subsequently, Amanda Knox served a prison sentence due to her conviction for Kercher’s murder. After her release from prison, she returned to Italy and filed an appeal seeking to overturn the slander conviction. The Appeals court began a retrial of her case in April 2024. Unfortunately for her, two months later, the court ruled to uphold her 2009 conviction.
In court, Knox had accused the Italian Police of forcing her to name Lumumba as the killer. She said the police used threats and violence to get her to do their bidding. “The police threatened me with 30 years in prison, and an officer slapped me three times saying ‘Remember, remember,'” she told the court.
“I’m very sorry that I wasn’t strong enough to withstand the pressure from the police,” she added. Even though she later took back her accusation against Lumumba, the courts weren’t convinced. She tried to convince the court that she made the slanderous statement “under the pressure of stress, shock, and extreme exhaustion.”
However, the court judgment from the Florence, Italy Appeals Court thinks differently. The court has insisted that “the manuscript was written spontaneously and freely, as the accused confirmed in the course of her examination.”
Amanda Knox’s Lengthy Tell-all Thread on X
Knox is far from happy with the Appeal court’s ruling. She has also drawn a link between the ruling and the poor treatment she allegedly suffered in police detention. In her X post, she made her feelings abundantly clear.
“The Italian justice system has been gaslighting me for 17 years now,” her post began. “It began during my interrogation, and it continues in the courts, most recently in the legal motivation released on August 8th, which explains why they found me guilty of slander back in June.”
“This gaslighting is upsetting and triggering—hearing a judge offer illogical arguments, present falsehoods as facts, and label me a liar—but it also inspires me to keep fighting because the police should be held accountable for their abuses of power,” she continued.
She also questioned the judge’s logic that led to the judgment while stating that the judgment was based on a false assumption.
“The judge is tripling down on the false assumption—first made by my interrogators—that I was present at my house when the crime occurred and that I must have first-hand knowledge of what happened there,” she wrote.
Amanda Knox also detailed alleged aspects of her interaction with the police. “After being slapped, lied to, threatened with prison, and convinced I couldn’t trust my own memories, the police told me, ‘We know you met Patrick. We know you were there. What happened?’” she recounted.
“I tried to remember Meredith being attacked. I guessed that she screamed. Who wouldn’t scream while being attacked with a knife?” Amanda Knox ended the post by referring its viewers to an episode of her podcast, Labyrinths, where she spoke extensively about the case. In addition, she vowed to take the case to the Supreme Court.
Amanda Knox Served Time in Jail
In 2009, Knox, alongside her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, was found guilty of her former roommate’s murder. On December 29, 2009, the courts sentenced Knox to 26 years and Sollecito to 25 years. Knox’s family and friends protested the sentencing and accused the Italian justice system of incompetence.
Lawyers appealed the sentence and uncovered flaws in the DNA evidence the court admitted in the initial trial. Luckily, Knox and her boyfriend secured their release due to a reversal of their convictions after three jury trials in 2011. Afterward, in 2015, Italy’s highest court officially exonerated them.
ALSO READ: The Hidden Truth Behind the Murder of Drag Racer Mickey Thompson
Who Killed Amanda Knox’s Roommate, Meredith Kercher?
When forensic experts took a closer and more thorough look at DNA evidence at the crime scene, they discovered that Amanda Knox and her boyfriend couldn’t have been responsible for the murder.
Their evidence pointed to Rudy Guede. Guede was the friend of Kercher and Knox’s neighbors from a nearby apartment. He was notorious for burglary but didn’t have any convictions.
After his arrest in Germany, he admitted to being at the scene of the murder. In October 2008, the courts sentenced him to 30 years in prison for stabbing Meredith Kercher to death. He served 13 years before he gained his freedom in November 2021.
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