Amanda Knox is back on trial in Italy, "and this is a good thing," she wrote in October in explaining what was to come. Knox was convicted of slander for wrongly accusing the owner of a bar where she worked part-time of murdering roommate Meredith Kercher in Italy in 2007. That defamation conviction is the only remaining "legal stain" against her, reports the AP. She asked for it to be thrown out based on a years-old ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that the interrogation in which she pointed a finger at Patrick Lumumba occurred without a lawyer present—and with Italian police cautioning her that getting one would only make her situation worse, reports the Independent. Italy's top court ordered a retrial of the slander conviction in October.
Knox is being tried in absentia, with her lawyer explaining that while Knox had initially planned to attend, "she is busy [in the US] taking care of her two young children, one of whom was born recently," reports the Guardian. Knox was sentenced to three years for slander after wrongly accusing Lumumba, though she recanted one day later in a four-page letter she wrote. Lumumba was questioned and held for two weeks until a witness provided an alibi for him; he ended up losing his business and leaving Italy with his family.
The AP reports her allegation against him was made in typed statements by police that she signed; they are inadmissible in this trial. Only Knox's handwritten letter can be used as evidence. Lumumba is joining the prosecution as a civil participant. Knox served her sentence during the four years she spent behind bars, after she was found guilty of murder and then freed on appeal in 2011. She was retried in 2013, found guilty again, and finally definitively acquitted in 2015. (More Amanda Knox stories.)
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