PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The slander trial centers on statements Knox, then 20, made to police when she was first arrested and questioned despite having a rudimentary knowledge of Italian and no legal assistance or translator. While Knox's accusations implicating Lumumba were written into police statements, she later recanted them in a handwritten note in English. Still, Lumumba was held for almost two weeks. Knox's defense team maintained that the accusation was coerced. In 2019, Europe's human rights court found that Knox "had been particularly vulnerable, being a foreign young woman, 20 at the time, not having been in Italy for very long and not being fluent in Italian."
STORY: "Amanda Knox plans 'to defend myself' in Italian courtroom at slander trial," published by Erik Ortiz, published by NBC News, on June 4, 2024. (Erik Ortiz is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital focusing on racial injustice and social inequality);
Knox, then an exchange student in the university town of Perugia, Italy, was definitively cleared in 2015 in the stabbing death of Meredith Kercher, seeming to draw to a close a yearslong legal odyssey that captivated Italy and grabbed headlines in the United States and Britain.
But a conviction for slander remained after Knox was accused of falsely implicating her former employer — a Congolese bar owner named Patrick Lumumba — in Kercher's killing.
Last fall, Italy's highest court threw out that conviction and ordered a new trial.
Knox, 36, has welcomed the chance to fully clear her name, as she has used her notoriety as an advocate for criminal justice reform.
"I will walk into the very same courtroom where I was reconvicted of a crime I didn't commit, this time to defend myself yet again," Knox posted Monday on X
"I hope to clear my name once and for all of the false charges against me. Wish me luck," she added, writing in Italian, "Crepi il lupo!" — an idiom used to thank others.
Knox's slander trial in Florence began in April and she is being tried in absentia, meaning the Seattle native has not had to appear.
She posted on X last fall that a new trial "has given me the opportunity to seek my full acquittal from this wrongful accusation of slander. I am no longer a convicted person. And I will fight with my lawyers to prove my innocence once and for all."
A slander conviction had carried a three-year sentence, which Knox fulfilled while she was detained on the murder charge beginning with her arrest in 2007.
Prosecutors had posited a number of theories to prove their allegation that Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, killed Kercher.
Sollecito was also charged and convicted in Kercher's killing and, like Knox, was acquitted on appeal and freed in 2011.
The pair's convictions were reinstated in 2014 before they were both officially cleared of the crime the following year.
The slander trial centers on statements Knox, then 20, made to police when she was first arrested and questioned despite having a rudimentary knowledge of Italian and no legal assistance or translator.
While Knox's accusations implicating Lumumba were written into police statements, she later recanted them in a handwritten note in English.
Still, Lumumba was held for almost two weeks.
Knox's defense team maintained that the accusation was coerced. In 2019, Europe's human rights court found that Knox "had been particularly vulnerable, being a foreign young woman, 20 at the time, not having been in Italy for very long and not being fluent in Italian."
The new trial features two professional judges and eight civilian jurors.
Last fall, Knox wrote that she and Lumumba are "both victims of the violation of my human rights during my interrogation, without which I was helpless against the coercive pressure of the police."
Kercher, 21, was found with more than 40 wounds, including a deep gash in the throat, at the apartment house she shared with Knox and two other roommates.
While the attention focused largely on Knox and Sollecito, another person was convicted in Kercher's stabbing death: Rudy Guede, a man who was reportedly acquaintances with other residents of the apartment house where Kercher and Knox lived and whose fingerprints were found at the crime scene.
Guede, who denied killing Kercher, was released in 2021 after serving most of a 16-year prison sentence.
Knox now has two young children and hosts a podcast with her husband, Christopher Robinson. A limited series about her wrongful conviction is in development by Hulu."
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
---------------------------------------------------------------
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
—————————————————————————————————
FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
————————————————————————————
YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801
——————————————————————————----
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
---------------------------------------------------------------
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
—————————————————————————————————
FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
————————————————————————————
YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801
——————————————————————————----
