news

Sara Connor: Bali prosecutors say Australian woman should be jailed for eight years over death.

By Adam Harvey

Lawyers for Byron Bay woman Sara Connor say they are shocked by a request from Indonesian prosecutors that their client be jailed for eight years for her role in the killing of a police officer.

Prosecutors said she was equally culpable and should serve the same amount of time as her boyfriend, David Taylor, who admitted beating a police officer to death.

Connor has also been attacked for being “evasive” in court and uncooperative with police and prosecutors.

For seven months, Connor has been optimistic the charges against her would fall over when the court understood she had no role in the killing of police officer Wayan Sudarsa.

She said she tried only to break up a fight between the officer and Taylor over a missing bag, but prosecutor Anak Agung Ngurah Jayalantara took a harsh view of Connor’s evidence.

“During the trial the defendant was evasive in giving her statements and she never admitted what she’s done,” he said.

Mr Jayalantara was particularly critical of Connor’s actions in the hours after Sudarsa’s battered body was found on a Kuta beach. Connor said she cut up the policeman’s cards from his wallet to protect him from identity theft.

“The attempt she made to destroy evidence is a form of involvement in the death of the victim, so unconsciously the defendant was trying to get rid of everything that was related to the victim because she wanted to protect herself from any involvement in the death of the victim,” the prosecutor said.

As the prosecutors demanded she serve a long jail term, Connor looked towards her own lawyers, dumbfounded.

You could hear her say “eight years”, in apparent disbelief.

Lawyers reiterate victim was alive when Connor, Taylor left

Connor’s lawyer, Erwin Siregar, has one more chance to convince judges she should not be jailed for the full term.

ADVERTISEMENT

“She never hit the victim, Sara’s actions are nothing like David’s, but the prosecutors say it’s the same as David’s and they should both serve eight years,” he said.

Another of her lawyers, Robert Kuana, said the penalty demand did not fit the evidence. She was on the beach looking for her missing bag when Taylor delivered the fatal blows to Sudarsa.

“There is no witness who mentioned that Sara is involved. There is one important point: Sara left David and the victim when this guy is still alive,” Mr Kuana said.

“Sara leave two guys when there is no blood. What’s the meaning of this? Sara never did something to make this guy die.”

Judges can hand down whatever verdict they want, but the sentence demand from prosecutors is influential. Mr Jayalantara said there was not enough evidence to prove a murder charge against Taylor.

“Because [Taylor] didn’t have the intention to kill — they all met there, they fought, there was no intent to kill, that’s the fact — so we can’t say that he had the intention to kill someone,” he said.

“The fact is that when he was about to leave the victim, he turned the victim’s body up, he was alive and he just left him. And in the end of the incident he never had the intention to kill him. Because when he turned the body up, the victim was still breathing and he left him behind.

“He did not know the result of his action that the fight resulted in a pressure at the back of the brain which cause the victim to die within two hours after it happened, like the expert witness said.”

The court will convene again next week to hear responses from lawyers for both accused. That is the end of the trial, and a verdict is expected in mid-March.

This post originally appeared on ABC News.


© 2017 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved. Read the ABC Disclaimer here