Canberra's underworld matriarch may walk free from jail six months earlier than expected after winning an appeal against her sentence for a violent standover job. Sharon Ann Stott smiled and made a "shaka" hand signal on Monday after learning she might not have to spend a second straight Christmas behind bars. The 59-year-old was last year found guilty of unlawful confinement and making a demand with a threat, following a nasty 2019 incident at the Kambah home of a heroin dealer. Justice John Burns found Stott had teamed up with another serial criminal, former Satudarah bikie boss David Evans, to extort a vulnerable drug addict there. Once inside, the pair ordered a man to sit in a chair as Stott demanded he pay a fictional $20,000 debt and Evans, acting as "muscle", stood menacingly nearby with a baseball bat. The shakedown attempt failed when the victim panicked and ran to grab a knife, eventually managing to chase his captors away despite being repeatedly belted with the bat. Justice Burns sentenced Stott to three years and four months in jail over the incident, imposing a non-parole period of two years and two months. Stott appealed, however, with her barrister Margaret Jones arguing in May that the sentence failed to take into account the "quasi-custody" Stott had been subjected to while on bail, when she was effectively under house arrest. Ms Jones also claimed the sentence did not reflect mitigating features like Stott's attempts to stop Evans striking the victim with the bat. Justice David Mossop, one of the three ACT Court of Appeal judges who heard the challenge, said on Monday it had been upheld. Stott, who appeared in court via audio-visual link from the Alexander Maconcochie Centre, was resentenced to two years and six months in jail, with a 20-month non-parole period. With time already served, she will now become eligible for release in November. The court's reasons for allowing the appeal will be published at a later date. Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content:
