Amanda Knox lawyer appeals slander conviction

SEATTLE (AP) — Amanda Knox's Italian lawyer has filed an appeal of her slander conviction in Italy, a Knox family spokesman in Seattle said Monday.

Photos: Amanda Knox returns home

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.

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.

An Italian judge set Knox's sentence for slander at three years, which was less than the time she spent in prison. That meant she could leave Italy.

In its ruling last fall, the Italian appeals court also acquitted Knox's then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, in the murder of Meredith Kercher.

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."