Amanda Knox was once-convicted and then exonerated in the murder of her former roommate Meredith Kercher, but was her initial conviction unfair? Meredith Kercher was found slain in her Italian apartment on November 1, 2007. She had been brutally stabbed and sexually assaulted in a crime that an investigation determined to be committed by multiple people. From there, a worldwide media circus spun out of control for years while Italian courts couldn’t decide what to do with the people they knew killed the woman. Ultimately, Knox and her former boyfriend were exonerated and their codefendant stayed behind bars on the very same evidence that was used to convict all three of them initially. Now, Knox lives freely in the United States and is heralded as the poster child for the wrongfully convicted, making a name for herself — and a living — off of the bones of Meredith Kercher, who was given no justice in the end.
A recent article referred to the conviction of Amanda Knox as unfair, and that couldn’t be further from reality. While it’s clearly true that she was eventually acquitted after years of imprisonment and legal battles, and while it’s a fact that she is free and “legally innocent,” it’s quite a stretch to disregard the evidence against Amanda as well as her own statements and behaviors which led to her conviction. It’s easy to fall for PR-spun Netflix specials and American-centric media coverage that paints Amanda Knox as a doe-eyed innocent who was victimized by an unjust foreign legal system — and apparently it’s easy to develop total amnesia over what happened 15 years ago, as well as the fact that Donald Trump had a role in manipulating public opinion in support of her — but all of the facts of this case remain public, as do countless archives of media.
Amanda Knox is only legally innocent (Just like Casey Anthony)
That doesn’t mean she didn’t do it, and that doesn’t mean she didn’t play a role in the crime as well as the attempted coverup. Being legally exonerated of a crime doesn’t mean you didn’t actually commit the crime. It just means you can’t be legally convicted or held responsible for whatever reasons are decided in court. In Amanda’s case, enough public doubt regarding the police handling of the investigation muddied things up in court and she found herself in a rare, lucky scenario. She is only legally innocent — much like Casey Anthony is only legally innocent and was acquitted in her trial. We can all agree that Casey Anthony was legally acquitted and can’t be held accountable for what happened to her daughter, but most of us can also overwhelmingly agree that her acquittal was a travesty. Most of us agree that the evidence against her — both circumstantial and forensic — was damning. The only difference between Casey Anthony’s case and Amanda Knox’s, is that Casey Anthony didn’t have the support of hundreds of thousands of dollars in PR and media campaigning to counter all of her lies, strange behavior and the evidence that stood against her.
Just some of the evidence against Knox includes the murder weapon that was found in her boyfriend’s apartment, which had Meredith’s DNA on the blade end. Several points in the apartment indicated that blood had been cleaned up after Meredith’s murder. Some of this was found in Knox’s room, and in another roommate’s room. The cleaned blood in the roommate’s room matched the DNA of both Knox and Kercher. There is also overwhelming evidence that Knox and her boyfriend staged the break-in. The list of evidence could go on-and-on-and-on, but it doesn’t matter since she’s been declared legally innocent. Meanwhile, all of the very same evidence that was used to convict and then acquit her, was used against her and her boyfriend’s codefendant Rudy Guede.
Amanda Knox is also a convicted liar (Just like Casey Anthony)
Knox, while most notoriously accused of killing Meredith Kercher, also wrongly accused an innocent Black man of the crime. His name is Patrick Lumumba, and not only was he completely innocent, but had no connection to the apartment where Knox and the murder victim both lived. Meredith Kercher didn’t know Lumumba, but Knox did. While being interrogated over the murder of Kercher, Knox knowingly and willingly threw Lumumba under the bus and lied to police, telling them that he entered their apartment and killed Meredith. She knew the entire time that she was lying, and for approximately two weeks she maintained that lie — knowing fully well that she was ruining an innocent man of color’s life. Lumumba had once hired Knox to work as a waitress at his business in Perugia, but shortly before she wrongly accused him of killing her roommate, he reportedly fired her for being too sexually inappropriate, unwilling to do her job properly and “hitting on customers.” So there’s a potential that she might have wrongly accused him as an act of revenge for losing her job. Nonetheless, Lumumba has long-believed that Knox used him as a scapegoat because he was a Black man, and an easy target for police.
“She tried to play the race card. She thought that by pointing the finger at a black person she’d distract attention from herself. She used me as a scapegoat,” the wrongly accused man said of Knox.
It should be repeated, numerous times, that Amanda Knox has been convicted of slander in regards to this situation. Even as recently as June 2024 an Italian court upheld the conviction, and Amanda keeps appealing it. Instead of owning up to her deplorable behavior, and instead of even apologizing appropriately and holding herself accountable, she’s instead chosen to blame how she was treated by police as an excuse for lying about an innocent Black man. Knox, the white American rich poster child for the wrongly accused fails to see the irony in this, I guess.
Unfair?
What’s unfair is that a young woman was murdered in her own apartment, and instead of ever truly getting justice her name continues to take a back burner to the suspects in her murder. What’s unfair is that an innocent man of color lost his business, fell under threat of mob violence and had to leave the country that he had migrated to and loved — all because of a dishonest white woman’s selfish drive for self preservation over what’s morally right. Amanda Knox was not unfairly convicted. There was more than enough circumstantial and forensic evidence to arrest and convict her in the first place. She chose to behave inappropriately during a serious situation that led to her being suspected, and she chose to lie to police and play games with the lives of innocent people. She chose to rely on the monetary donations of Donald Trump and his (at the time) influence in the media and she continues to choose to dance around her accountability on things that she has been convicted of doing. What’s also unfair is the fact that this opinion will draw criticism from the same kind of people who share memes about the unjust killing of Emmett Till every time it becomes popular to do so, while ignoring that they’re idolizing someone no different from the woman who caused his death. There are many things that have been and continue to be unfair about this entire story, but Amanda Knox’s conviction isn’t on that list.
Chelsea Hoffman is a true crime writer with over a decade of professional writing experience. She is best known for her coverage of missing people including the tragic disappearance of Madeleine McCann as well as the heartbreaking cases of Dylan Redwine, Heather Elvis and many others.
