Florence, Italy (NewsNation) — Amanda Knox was convicted again for Defamation in an Italian courtroom on Wednesday, despite being acquitted of charges related to the murder of her British roommate in 2007 when the two were exchange students in Italy.

The court concluded that she had wrongly accused an innocent man of murder. She will not have to serve any further prison time as the three-year sentence will count as time already served.

The murder of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher in the idyllic mountain town of Perugia made headlines around the world when suspicion fell on Knox, a 20-year-old exchange student from Seattle, and her new Italian boyfriend, whom she had been dating for just a week. Raffaele Sollecito.

“I am very sorry”: Amanda Knox

Knox, who was in Italy for the trial for the first time since 2011, showed no visible emotion as the verdict was read, the Associated Press reported.

In a soft, sometimes shaky voice, Knox told the court that she had wrongly accused Patrick Lumumba, the bar owner who employed Knox part-time, under intense pressure from the police.

“I am very sorry that I was not strong enough to withstand the pressure from the police,” Knox said in a nine-minute prepared statement to the panel sitting next to her on the jury box. She told them, “I did not know who the killer was. I had no way of finding out.”

Amanda Knox' trials

Knox and Sollecito spent four years in prison after initially being convicted of Kercher's murder before being acquitted by Italy's highest court in 2015.

Rudy Hermann Guede, a drifter who lived in Perugia, was later convicted of Kercher's murder in a summary trial that carries a lesser sentence. Although he was sentenced to 16 years in prison, which included a finding that he did not act alone, Guede was released from prison in 2021 after serving 13 years. He was recently ordered to wear a monitoring bracelet and not leave his house at night after an ex-girlfriend accused him of physical and sexual abuse.

The accusation of defamation

Lumumba was arrested and held as a suspect in the Kercher murder case, which stemmed from Knox's questioning by police. Lumumba has since left Italy and lives with his family in Eastern Europe, according to the Associated Press, but has joined the current prosecution as a civil party.

The libel conviction was the only charge against Knox to withstand five court rulings. It was based on two police typed statements that Knox signed in Italian after a lengthy interview without a lawyer or competent interpreter.

At her first libel trial, Knox said police pressure led her to accuse an innocent man. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the conditions of Knox's interrogation violated her human rights.

For this reason, Italy's highest court overturned the defamation conviction, ruled that the two police statements were inadmissible and ordered a retrial. This time, the court could only examine Knox's handwritten statements for elements that could support defamation.

NewsNation correspondent Brooke Shafer and The Associated Press contributed to this report.