“Foxy Knoxy” is no longer a convict, but she will once again be a defendant — this time in a civil case — when her trial begins at Florence on Wednesday, years after she was convicted, imprisoned, and ultimately acquitted of murdering her roommate, Meredith Kercher, at the town of Perugia in 2007. 

Seattle native Amanda Knox, now 36, says she hopes to clear her name of the slander conviction hanging over her for wrongly accusing her former boss, Patrick Lumumba, of committing the murder. She was a 20-year-old exchange student at the time she made the accusation. Italy’s Cassation Court ruled in 2015 that another man, a drifter named Rudy Guede, whose DNA was at the scene, committed the crime. 

Ms. Knox spent years in an Italian prison while Florentine prosecutors investigated and tried her and her then-boyfriend, Rafaelle Sollecito, for Kercher’s murder. After an investigation widely regarded as badly botched and a trial in which imaginative prosecutors raised bizarre theories about devil worship and witchcraft, Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito were convicted in 2009 and sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison, respectively. They were later acquitted by an appeals court in 2011.

The court ordered a retrial after Ms. Knox appealed for the dropping of the slander conviction. Last November, a European Court of Human Rights determined that her rights had been violated in a long night of questioning without a lawyer and official translator. Ms. Knox’s lawyers say she made the allegation under police duress and did not have legal assistance or an interpreter.

“I plan on pursuing justice to the fullest extent that I can,” Ms. Knox told KING 5 Seattle in December, “and I hope that ultimately I will be acquitted and really this whole thing could be put behind me.”

This marks the second time Ms. Knox will visit Italy after she was acquitted in 2015. She returned in 2019 as a keynote speaker at a conference on criminal justice. It’s unclear at what point in the trial she will appear in court, but she said in the December interview that she is prepared to stand up for herself in court in Italy. 

Public interest in Ms. Knox’s fight within the Italian legal system doesn’t appear to be subsiding any time soon. She is the subject of an upcoming Hulu mini-series “based on the true story of how Knox was wrongfully convicted for the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher and her 16-year odyssey to set herself free,” the series’ official description reads. Actress Margaret Qualley will play Ms. Knox. 

Ms. Knox, whose family bristled at the “Foxy Knoxy” moniker, which she’d used on social media prior to her arrest, has made a career for herself in America since coming home to Seattle eight years ago. She campaigns for criminal justice reform and raises awareness about forced confessions. Netflix enlisted her help with a documentary about the case. Her memoir raked in a $4 million advance. She has also married and had two children.

Yet doubts about her innocence linger, especially in Italy. The Kercher family lawyer, Francesco Maresca, still expresses uncertainty toward Ms. Knox despite the high court’s exoneration in 2015. He cites her confused retraction of her accusation against Mr. Lumumba.

“There is still part of the public opinion that does not accept the Court of Cassation’s decision, and these debates become a sport,” an Italian lawyer who founded the Innocents Project, Lauria Baldassare, said, according to the Associated Press. “Italy does not have the maturity to accept an exoneration because social prejudices are stronger than the finding.”

The only person convicted for Kercher’s murder, Guede, served 13 years of a 16-year prison sentence and was released in 2021 for good behavior. At the time of his conviction, Florentine prosecutors said he and another killer murdered Kercher together. The second killer has never been identified.