European Court Orders Italy to Pay Damages to Amanda Knox

 European Court of Human Rights to pay compensation to Amanda KnoxUPDATED: 2019/01/24 1:00PM

Italy has been ordered by the European Court of Human Rights to pay compensation to Amanda Knox, the American woman who, at 20 years old, was charged with murder and found herself in the middle of a case that captivated the world.

In 2009, Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were found guilty of the murder and sexual assault of Meredith Kercher. Knox was also convicted of making a malicious accusation when she blamed the murder of Kercher on a bar manager. He was later found to have had an alibi. In 2011, the two were freed when an appeals court was able to turn over their convictions, citing lack of evidence. But then, two years later, the pair were retried and their convictions were restored. Finally, in 2015, Italy’s Court of Cassation, which is Italy’s highest appeals court, exonerated Knox and Sollecito. Knox’s conviction for malicious accusation remained in place.

In 2016, Knox was given permission to take her case to the European Court of Human Rights, where she fought to have her remaining conviction threw out in Italian courts.

The ECHR said that Italy should pay Knox the equivalence of about $20,800 for failing to provide her with a lawyer and appropriate interpreter when she was first detained by police. The courts said that Knox’s interpreter provided to Knox acted inappropriately and Knox, who had just moved to Perugia, was not fluent in Italian.

The court’s ruling said, “In the court’s view, the initial failure had thus had repercussions for other rights and compromised the fairness of the proceedings as a whole. The courts have given Italy three months to appeal the decision.