Vic: Two year increase in jail term of teenage killers
MELBOURNE, Aug 23 AAP - Two teenage killers of a frail 73-year-old Melbourne grandmotherhad their four-year-minimum jail terms extended by two years today.
However, a daughter of the dead woman said the higher sentence still remained "insulting"
to the memory of her mother, Marie Greening-Zidan, whose battered, bloodstained body wasfound on her bedroom floor on October 16, 2000.
The boys, then habitual paint sniffers, were 15 and 16 when they attacked Mrs Greening-Zidanat her bayside Seaford home during a botched break-in.
She died from strangulation but had also been beaten about the head, chest and back,suffered fractured ribs and had been sexually assaulted.
The boys pleaded guilty to manslaughter and in April were sentenced to six years witha minimum non-parole term of four years.
Today, the Victoria Court of Appeal quashed the original sentence and instead imposeda maximum sentence of nine years with a minimum of six years.
The Director of Public Prosecutions had appealed against the leniency of the sentence.
In the judgment handed down today, the presiding judge, Victoria's Chief Justice, JohnHarber Philips said: "We are obliged to say that we are not aware of a manslaughter whichhas been accompanied by such a degree of callousness.
"The sexual assault exhibited a profound contempt for her (the dead woman's) dignityas a human being."
Outside the court, daughter Janine Bramley said she was glad the sentence had beenincreased, but she said, "in a way, I think this is an insult.
The boys had never shown any remorse, she said, and she would have liked to have seena much longer sentence imposed.
AAP sew/jlw/cjh/de
KEYWORD: ZIDAN
No comments:
Post a Comment