Amanda Knox to make final appeal in Italy’s highest court to clear her name

ROME—Amanda Knox has a final shot at clearing her name of the last vestige of criminal wrongdoing when Italy’s highest court on Thursday hears her appeal of a slander conviction for falsely accusing a Congolese bar owner in the 2007 murder of her British flatmate.

But the innocent man she accused, Patrick Lumbumba, told reporters outside Italy’s Cassation Court that he hopes the conviction stands and “stays with her for the rest of her life.”

The ruling should bring an end to a sensational 17-year legal saga that saw Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend convicted and acquitted in flip-flop verdicts in 21-year-old Meredith Kercher’s brutal murder, before being exonerated by the highest Cassation Court in 2015.

The slander conviction against Knox remained the last legal stain against her. It survived multiple appeals, and Knox was reconvicted on the charge in June after a European court ruling that Italy had violated her human rights cleared the way for a new trial.

Amanda is watching the verdict at home “confident and respectful of the justice system as she always has been. She is confident that this story will end today,” her defense lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova told reporters.

Knox said recently on her “Labyrinths” podcast that “I hate the fact that I have to live consequences for a crime I did not commit.”