Amanda Knox, left, is comforted by her sister, Deanna Knox, during a news conference shortly after her arrival at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Oct. 4, 2011.
Amanda Knox’s Italian lawyer has filed an appeal of her slander conviction in Italy, a family spokesman said Monday.
In October, an Italian appeals court overturned the young Seattle woman’s murder conviction in the 2007 death of her British roommate in Perugia. But the same court upheld Knox’s conviction for slander — for falsely accusing bar owner Diya “Patrick” Lumumba of involvement in the slaying.
Lumumba was freed after two weeks in prison for lack of evidence.
Knox later said she was “manipulated” during her lengthy police interrogation.
Amanda Knox ‘loves Italy’ and might return
An appeal of the slander conviction was filed Monday, Knox family spokesman Dave Marriott confirmed. He doesn’t know when the Italian court might consider it.
Knox returned to Seattle after her murder conviction was overturned. The former exchange student had been in custody since 2007.
In its ruling last fall, the Italian appeals court also acquitted Knox’s then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, in the murder of Meredith Kercher.
An Italian appeals court throws out Amanda Knox’s murder conviction and orders her free after nearly four years in prison for the death of her British roommate. NBC’s Lester Holt reports.
A third defendant, Ivory Coast-born drifter Rudy Guede, was convicted in a separate trial of sexually assaulting and stabbing Kercher. His 16-year prison sentence — reduced on appeal from an initial 30 years — was upheld by Italy’s highest court in 2010.
In a lengthy court document explaining the ruling that cleared Knox and Sollecito, presiding appeals court Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellmann wrote that Knox implicated Lumumba after hours of intense police questioning because “she was convinced that was what the police wanted her to do; to name a guilty person.”
More from msnbc.com and NBC News:
- US shutters embassy in Syria, withdraws all personnel
- US levies new sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank
- 3 dead, dozens missing after blast at Pakistan factory
- US tour guide recounts kidnapping in Egypt
- Anti-Putin protesters: Bitter cold and big questions
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.