Romance Scam: Donna's appeal result

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A Desperate Appeal.

How a Japanese court has heard the plea of an Australian woman.

I'm Stephen Stockwell.

Welcome to the case of the romance scam.

Since her arrest in early January 2023, Donna Nelson and her family have been living living a nightmare.

Two kilograms of methamphetamine were found in the lining of a suitcase that she took to Japan.

Her family has always maintained she was conned into traveling into Asia by a man met online two years prior.

The innocent victim of a love scammer.

It just seems like a bad dream.

I've never

thought

that she would have ever been involved in this.

This morning, Perth woman Donna Nelson woke up in a Japanese prison, serving six years for drug trafficking after two helos of meth was found in her suitcase.

She was found guilty in December last year, but her family says that she was tricked into transporting the drugs by a man she'd been talking to online for two years, Kelly, a man that she'd even discussed marrying.

As we heard in our last episode, the case of the romance scam, that did not sway the court.

So Donna's last chance for her to clear her name was to appeal the verdict.

Her lawyers have made that case, and today the court handed down its judgment.

To find out what has unfolded, I'm joined by James Otton, the ABC's North Asia correspondent who is outside the court building in Tokyo.

James, thank you for joining us and making time to update the case of.

My pleasure.

Now, before we get into what's happened today, can you quickly remind us what Donna Nelson's lawyers were asking for here?

Did they want a shorter sentence, her conviction quashed?

What were they looking for?

They wanted the conviction quashed.

There are a few options that can happen with an appeal.

Certainly, like any appeal, you can have the sentence increased or decreased, but these were not considered realistic options for this particular appeal.

We know the prosecution, for instance, didn't ask for a longer jail sentence.

That was never really on the cards.

And certainly Donna's lawyers did not expect the sentence to be decreased.

The options really were, would the appeal be upheld, meaning Donna gets off, or would it be dismissed, meaning Donna goes back to her Tokyo jail cell?

The third option, which was possible, is that it gets sent back for trial.

So those were the options.

Yeah, and I mean, this has been a several year-long process, right?

Donna Nelson was arrested at the start of 2023.

She says she was a victim of a romance scam.

And despite that, she was still convicted of drug trafficking of December that year.

What unfolded in the appeal court today?

Well, first of all, I guess Donna Nelson herself was optimistic.

She's been quite optimistic throughout this whole process, despite being in this jail cell, as we've gone over before with around 23 hours a day or more in solitary confinement.

These are really tough conditions that Japanese prisons have.

But despite that, she's been quite optimistic throughout this whole process.

And her daughters tell us that this optimism has affected the whole family, that before today's verdict, they too were holding on to optimism.

When Donna Nelson first walked in, she's mouthed, I love you, to her daughters.

And then quickly the emotions came to the surface.

she was asked to stand in front of the judge introduce herself her voice was quivering as she did that and then the judge pretty quickly after announced that the appeal case had been dismissed they then go through the reasons of why this case has been dismissed and essentially what it has done is upheld all the same arguments that the first judge in the first trial had concluded, saying that this was a very strange request,

that the request was quote unnatural.

And ultimately, she did have the opportunity to consider and reconsider the request to bring the bag.

Just a month prior, she'd expressed concern to Kelly about moving bags around.

So a month later, she suddenly agreed to move a bag.

The court here in Tokyo has found that to be quite odd.

So ultimately, like the first trial, they have concluded that she acted negligently, that she put a lid on her doubts.

She must have known something was suspicious about what she was doing.

She should have said no.

We go through everything that unfolded in those trials in our previous episodes of the case of the romance scam.

I'll put a link to them in the description so you can get back and you know, catch up on all of this, hear all of these.

You know, James and Olivia Rousseau from Australian Story talking us through that.

I mean, James, you're talking about how the court here has kind of backed up, you know, what we talked about in those episodes.

Did it take long today to get through all of this?

Took about half an hour, 40 minutes to go over.

But I must say, I didn't find that the judge didn't make clear any further evidence against Donna's case other than repeating that line that this was an unusual request and that she must have had doubts, even saying things like,

you know, she didn't display any, I guess, cognitive issues.

So for a normal person, you can say, well, of course, bringing a bag from one country to another for someone you've never met, that's odd and you shouldn't do it.

And that's what the judge here has essentially declared that you are a reasonable person so therefore you should have known better it's important to note though that in this appeal we had evidence from a love scam expert professor monica witty from monash university and it went into great detail about the extent of these love scams the criminal networks that confuse and dupe their victims this was not an overnight thing This was two years in the making, two years of message between this man called Kelly and Donna Nelson.

This expert expert testimony argued that Donna Nelson could not have known that she was trusting drugs and argued that there are many Donna Nelsons.

This is not a one-off thing.

One person has acted a bit stupidly.

This happens all the time.

But that evidence was not accepted by the court.

And there needs to be reasons why new evidence is accepted.

And you really have to prove that it was unavoidable to not use it in the first case and you could only use it in the appeal.

And that's a hard ask to make when we're dealing with an expert this is not some new evidence that was uncovered somewhere this is an expert and they've decided not to use such testimony in the first trial but they have tried it in the appeal and it's been unsuccessful so once we knew that experts evidence had been dismissed the chance of donna succeeding dropped quite drastically

donna nelson in in the courtroom today as this was handed down um how did she react it was hard for me to say sorry because she had her back to me.

She was fronting the court, but you could see the distress from the daughters.

They were considering this was an option.

So they've always been thinking of the various outcomes that can happen.

What can happen now?

Well, she can appeal.

She has 14 days to do so.

Or they can focus their efforts on bringing Donna home in a prisoner transfer.

scheme.

You cannot get that process underway while there's an appeal process.

So that's a difficult decision to make.

So they have not been able to put in that formal request because there's been appeal.

So it's another delicate decision.

Do we appeal again to an even higher court or do we cut our losses and focus on trying to get Donna back to Australia as quickly as possible, even if that means prisoner transfer?

James, thank you so much for joining us from outside the court in Tokyo for this episode.

We'll have you back next week with Olivia Rousseau from Australian Story 2 to unpack a bit more about what this means for Donna, hear how the family's taken the news and look a bit deeper into some of those next steps.

So make sure you grab yourself the ABC listener so you're first in line for that episode on Tuesday.

And if you have any questions, please email the caseof at abc.net.au.

We're planning a special QA episode where we answer all of your questions for next Thursday as well.

So please get in touch and we'll be back in your feed soon.

The case of the romance scam is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News.

This episode was reported by James Oten and presented by me, Stephen Stockwell.

Our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson.

Supervising producer for this episode is Tamar Cranswick.

This episode was produced on the land of the Wurundjeri people.

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