Rome
CNN
 — 

Amanda Knox, the American who spent 4 years in jail in Italy for the homicide of her roommate earlier than she was cleared of the crime, returns to an Italian courtroom on Wednesday looking for to reverse a lesser cost associated to the case that attracted world consideration greater than a decade in the past.

This time, Knox is battling to overturn a slander conviction for falsely accusing her then-boss Patrick Lumumba of the homicide of Meredith Kercher, Knox’s British roommate when the pair had been college students within the Italian metropolis of Perugia.

Kercher’s physique was discovered on November 2, 2007, with stab wounds to the neck within the house she shared with Knox and two Italian ladies in Perugia.

Lumumba was arrested for the homicide in November 2007 together with Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, primarily based on Knox’s confession to police throughout an interrogation with no lawyer current.

Lumumba, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, served almost two weeks in jail earlier than an absence of proof led to his launch.

Knox, Sollecito and Ivory Coast native Rudy Guede, whose DNA was current within the homicide room, had been all convicted of the homicide in 2009. Guede admitted to being in the home with Kercher the night time she died, however denied killing her. He stated each Knox and Sollecito had been additionally there.

Guede served 13 years of a 16-year sentence and was launched in 2021.

Knox and Sollecito’s homicide convictions had been overturned by a Perugia appellate court docket in 2011 after an unbiased assessment of key forensic proof, solely to have that acquittal overturned by Italy’s supreme court docket in 2013. A Florentine appellate court docket then convicted the pair once more in 2014. Knox was by then again in US and didn’t attend that trial.

The 36-year-old Seattle native, now a mom of two, together with Sollecito, had been definitively cleared in 2015 of Kercher’s homicide after Italy’s supreme court docket voided the 2013 re-conviction.

After being cleared of homicide, Knox remained convicted of slander in opposition to Lumumba, a ruling upheld by Italy’s supreme court docket in 2015. She was sentenced to 3 years in jail, which she served whereas awaiting the unique homicide trial and subsequent enchantment.

She petitioned the European Court docket of Human Rights, which dominated in 2019 that her human rights had been violated when she accused Lumumba of the homicide as a result of she didn’t have a lawyer current, nor was there an appropriate translator throughout the interrogation that was neither filmed nor recorded. The court docket dominated that the circumstances “compromised the equity of the proceedings as a complete.”

The European court docket case led the Italian supreme court docket to reopen after which overturn her slander conviction in 2023 and order the brand new trial presently underway in Florence that started April 10. She has not attended any earlier hearings, however has been again in Italy a number of occasions, together with in 2021 to talk at Italy’s Innocence Mission, which advocates for wrongfully convicted folks.

The ultimate listening to on Wednesday will happen in the identical courtroom the place Knox’s 2013 conviction occurred. Attorneys for the prosecution, Knox and Lumumba will converse. Knox’s lawyer instructed CNN she’s going to testify however it isn’t recognized if Lumumba might be current.

Knox doesn’t face extra jail time regardless of the result of Wednesday’s listening to.

The 2 judges and eight jurors will deliberate the case till a verdict is reached on whether or not to overturn the slander conviction or uphold it.

The choice will then must go to Italy’s supreme court docket as soon as extra. “On June fifth, I’ll stroll into the exact same courtroom the place I used to be reconvicted of against the law I didn’t commit, this time to defend myself but once more,” Knox wrote on X. “I hope to clear my identify as soon as and for all the false fees in opposition to me. Want me luck!”

Knox is presently engaged on a sequence about her life story with former White Home intern Monica Lewinsky for the US streaming service Hulu.