An Italian court on Wednesday upheld Amanda Knox’s conviction for slandering her former boss for the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, Knox’s British roommate.

Knox was convicted in 2009 of slander for falsely accusing Patrick Lumumba of murdering Kercher in the Italian city of Perugia. An appellate court in Florence upheld Knox’s slander conviction.

The decision by a Florence appeals court marks the sixth time and final time that an Italian court found Knox had wrongly pointed the finger at an innocent man. Knox worked part-time in a Lumumba-owned bar. 

Following the ruling, Knox said she was “really disappointed.” 

“I haven’t slept,” she said. “I feel sad, but I’m determined. I have nothing to hide and will never stop telling the truth. I didn’t slander Patrick Lumumba, the bar owner. I didn’t kill my friend. I will return here as often as possible to fight against this injustice.”

Lumumba was arrested for the murder in November 2007, along with Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, based on Knox’s confession to police during an interrogation without a lawyer present. 

Lumumba, however, was released after three weeks because he had an air-tight alibi. 

Meanwhile, a known burglar, Rudy Guede, was soon arrested after his bloody fingerprints were found on Kercher’s possessions. 

He was convicted of murder in a fast-track trial and was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment, later reduced to 16 years. In December 2020, an Italian court ruled that Guede could complete his term through community service.

Knox, 36, who is native to Seattle and a graduate of the University of Washington, was convicted in 2009 of slander for falsely accusing Lumumba of murdering Kercher.

In 2007, during an interrogation, Knox, then 20, accused Lumumba, of the murder, which led to his arrest.

Knox signed two statements prepared by police regarding this accusation but later wrote a handwritten note to cast doubt on her accusation. 

Knox and Sollecito, then both 25, whom she had been seeing for around a week, were charged with Kercher’s murder. Prosecutors alleged it was a case of rough sex that got violent. 

After the two were convicted in December 2009, Knox and Sollecito were sentenced to 25 years in prison, but they only spent four years locked up. Neither Knox nor Sllectico are expected to serve any more time in prison.

Speaking in Italian in the same courtroom where she was convicted a decade earlier, Knox told the judge that she was “exhausted and confused” when she accused Lumumba of the murder.

She said the police told her she “must have been involved in the horrible crime,” adding that they “yelled at me to remember, remember.” She also apologized for not appearing stressed at the time. “It was a statement made by a young woman in an existential crisis,” she said.

As a result of being accused, Lumumba said he lost everything. He now lives with his wife in Poland.