PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "During the June hearing, Knox told the two-judge, six-jury panel that she was sorry she did not try to retract the accusation against Lumumba sooner, but insisted she was “a young person in an existential crisis” when she accused him. “I did not know who the assassin was,” she told the court."
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STORY: "Amanda Knox slander conviction upheld by Italy’s high court: by Contributor Barbie Latza Nadeau, published by CNN, on January 23, 2025.
GIST: "Italy’s high court has upheld the remaining conviction against American Amanda Knox, who was jailed and later acquitted of the 2007 murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher.
Knox was convicted of slandering her former boss Patrick Lumumba by falsely accusing him of Kercher’s murder. Knox, 20 at the time, signed two statements prepared by police regarding her accusation against Lumumba. She later wrote a handwritten note questioning her false accusation.
Lumumba was arrested after Knox’s accusation and spent two weeks in jail until police released him due to lack of forensic evidence. He blames the arrest on his losing his club Le Chic, which closed shortly after.
In a long legal saga, Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of Kercher’s murder after her body was found at the student apartment she shared with Knox in Perugia. The two were acquitted, then reconvicted before being definitively acquitted in 2015.
However, the slander conviction remained. Knox petitioned the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 2023 that her rights were violated during the 2007 interrogation that led to her false accusation against Lumumba.
In June 2024, a court in Florence upheld the slander conviction, which led to Thursday’s high court hearing.
Knox, who attended the June 2024 hearing but who did not attend Thursday’s high court session, posted a lengthy thread on X outlining her side of the story, including how the police “were never held accountable for the crimes they committed against me behind closed doors.”
In a separate post following the verdict, she said, “It’s a surreal day. I’ve just been found guilty yet again of a crime I didn’t commit. And I was just awarded the Innocence Network Impact Award, ‘created to honor an exonerated person who raises awareness of wrongful convictions, policy issues, or assists others post-release.’”
Lumumba, who did attend Thursday’s hearing, told reporters upon entering the court that Knox “never apologized to me.”
Speaking outside court after the verdict, Lumumba said he was “very satisfied” with the ruling, according to the news agency Reuters. “Amanda did wrong, this sentence must accompany her for the rest of her life. I had a good feeling about this since the afternoon. I hail Italian justice with great honor,” he said.
During the June hearing, Knox told the two-judge, six-jury panel that she was sorry she did not try to retract the accusation against Lumumba sooner, but insisted she was “a young person in an existential crisis” when she accused him. “I did not know who the assassin was,” she told the court.
Knox does not face any additional jail time."
The entire story cannot be 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
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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;
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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;
