Siti Nurhidayah Kamal was jailed three years for blackmail last March for trying to extort money from a couple desperate to retrieve their lost phone containing pictures of their terminally ill 11-month-old daughter, Amiyah.
According to a news.com report, 26-year-old Siti Nurhidayah messaged parents Jay and Dee Windross after they appealed to the public in 2019 to find their phone containing hundreds of images of their child.
Despite never having the phone, she demanded AU$1,000 from the couple even as they told her their daughter was “in her last minutes”.
“Please transfer me money. I will return you the phone or maybe I will just sell it,” she told them, threatening to delete the images.
She is now appealing her sentence in the Court of Appeal, arguing the jail time was excessive and that the original county court judge was wrong to find that her remorse did not detract from the “cruelty” of her actions.
Her lawyer, Tim Marsh, said Siti Nurhidayah’s prospects for rehabilitation were favourable given her age and lack of previous criminal history.
Court documents suggest the judge was “overwhelmed” by the nature of the crime and gave undue weight to aggravating features.
Marsh also argued her sentence was “manifestly excessive” but conceded the nature of the crime against the vulnerable parents was “odious”.
However, crown prosecutor Justin Lewis said this was a particularly grave example of blackmail, as “there was a willingness to exploit people who were facing the imminent death of their 11-month-old daughter for the purposes of making money”.
He argued Siti Nurhidayah indicated an absence of moral principles, adding that it was not controversial to label her actions as “amoral”.
The judges presiding over the appeal reserved their decision for a later date.
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