Vashon Island resident Amanda Knox, exonerated in 2015 after being wrongfully convicted of the murder of her roommate during a 2007 study-abroad trip in Italy, now faces a new trial in the Mediterranean country — this time, one she’s eager to take on.

An Italian court overturned a slander conviction against Knox last week, ordering she face a new trial to determine whether she defamed a bar owner by wrongfully accusing him of killing British student Meredith Kercher.

Knox, who has lived on the island with her husband, Chris Robinson, since 2019, says it’s an opportunity to fully clear her name and demonstrate how authorities bullied and coerced her into signing that accusation.

“I am no longer a convicted person,” she wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “And I will fight with my lawyers to prove my innocence once and for all.”

More than 15 years ago, Knox was fulfilling her dream of studying abroad in Perugia, Italy, with a group of young students. But on Nov. 2, 2007, the body of Kercher was discovered in a bedroom of the house she shared with Knox and two others. Kercher had been raped and brutally murdered. Though the evidence pointed to a known burglar, Rudy Guede, the police focused their attention on Knox and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.

Guede was convicted and sentenced in 2008. Still, Italian authorities kept the spotlight on Knox and Sollecito, alleging they were accomplices. She was vilified in court and salacious stories about her alleged behavior ran in the press.

“What my case revealed is that public opinion really does influence judicial outcomes,” Knox told The Beachcomber last year.

Knox and Sollecito were convicted, wrongfully, for the murder in 2009. An appeals court overturned their convictions in 2011, and Knox, who had spent nearly four years behind bars, returned home to Seattle.

But an Italian court reversed the appeals verdict and ordered a new trial for the two.

Knox remained in the U.S. during the trial, and in 2014, the two were once again wrongfully convicted of killing Kercher. The next year, Italy’s top court overturned their convictions for Kercher’s murder again, officially finding them innocent of the murder.

But one part of Knox’s conviction remained: The court’s 2015 ruling upheld her conviction of slander for wrongfully implicating bar owner Patrick Lumumba of the murder while she was interrogated by police.

“Though I was exonerated for murder, I remained wrongly convicted of slander,” Knox said on X.

Lumumba spent two weeks in jail, released only after a witness provided an alibi for him. He has told the news media that the accusation ruined his reputation, forcing him to leave Italy and rebuild his career.

Knox’s lawyers have argued that she was coerced into signing statements implicating Lumumba while under police duress, and without access to legal counsel or an interpreter.

“At the time of these tragic events, Patrick Lumumba was my friend,” Knox said on X. “We are both victims of the violation of my human rights during my interrogation, without which I was helpless against the coercive pressure of the police.”

Knox was sentenced to three years of time served for that slander charge. She appealed the decision, citing a 2019 European Court of Human Rights ruling that her rights to a lawyer and interpreter were violated when Italian officials interrogated her.

Her ability to challenge the conviction is also a result of a reform made to Italy’s criminal code in 2022, according to The Guardian.