Grace Millane's killer appeals against conviction as he 'did not get fair trial'
The 28-year-old man's lawyer says there were consent issues and too much weight was placed on his actions after her death.
Thursday 6 August 2020 07:45, UK
British backpacker Grace Millane's killer has appealed against his conviction and punishment as his lawyer says he did not get a fair trial.
The 28-year-old man, who cannot be named, was found guilty in February of strangling the British gap year tourist the night before her 22nd birthday in December 2018 after meeting her through the dating app Tinder.
They went out for drinks in the New Zealand city of Auckland before going to his hotel apartment, where he killed the young woman from Wickford, Essex.
He put her body into a suitcase, drove to a forest and buried it in a shallow grave, where police found it a week later.
Prosecutors during the trial said the man had deliberately strangled Ms Millane to death, but his lawyers claimed the death was accidental after the pair engaged in consensual erotic choking that went too far.
The jury found the New Zealand man guilty and he was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years.
His lawyer, Rachael Reed, told the Court of Appeal judges she was not seeking to excuse the man's "abhorrent" actions after Ms Millane's death, according to local news website Stuff.
She said she was appealing both the conviction and length of sentence as the judge placed too much weight on those actions in determining the man's sentence.
Ms Reed also said there were questions around the issue of consent, some of the expert evidence, and negative evidence given by other women about the man's character.