FLORENCE, Italy - An Italian court on Wednesday found American Amanda Knox guilty of slander and issued a three-year sentence over accusations she made in relation to the murder of her British flatmate in Perugia in 2007.
Knox had been sentenced to three years for wrongly accusing Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba of the killing of Meredith Kercher in an earlier case. Knox had spent four years in jail for the killing but that conviction was annulled in 2015.
The sentence will have no practical impact as it is covered by the time Knox has spent in jail.
A tearful Knox earlier on Wednesday apologised for naming an innocent man as the killer, blaming Italian police for her original false statement.
She accused Italian police of threats and violence as she sought to overturn a conviction for slander in the last outstanding case against her since the killing of her British flatmate in 2007.
“The police threatened me with 30 years in prison, an officer slapped me three times saying ‘Remember, remember’,” Knox told the court, saying that police wanted her to blame Lumumba.
“I’m very sorry that I wasn’t strong enough to withstand the pressure from the police,” she added, speaking in Italian.
Italy’s top court in 2015 annulled Knox’s conviction for the murder in the city of Perugia, capping nearly a decade of courtroom drama during which she had twice been found guilty.
The brutal stabbing of 21-year-old Kercher and multiple trials provided fodder for tabloids on both sides of the Atlantic and inspired books and films.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2019 that there had been procedural errors during Knox’s questioning, and Italy’s highest court last year ordered a retrial in the slander case.
Lumumba was held for two weeks in 2007 before he was freed.
“When Patrick was accused by Amanda, he became known everywhere as the monster of Perugia,” Lumumba’s lawyer Carlo Pacelli told reporters on Wednesday, arguing that the conviction should be upheld. Lumumba was not in court.
Holding hands with her husband Christopher Robinson, Knox, 36, earlier made no comment to journalists and camera crews when she arrived at the court.
Rudy Guede, originally from the Ivory Coast, was sentenced to 16 years in jail for the killing of Kercher, in a ruling that said he acted with unnamed other culprits. He was granted early release in 2021.