A woman serving a 23-year jail term for smothering her mother with a pillow has appealed her conviction and sentence.
Natalie Maher, 48, was unanimously found guilty by a jury of the murder of Veronica Corstorphine, 71, at Keane Street, West South Launceston, on October 3, 2019.
Justice Robert Pearce sentenced Maher to a 13-year non-parole period saying that a longstanding antagonism towards her mother had flared on the night of the murder.
In the appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeal Maher suggest the learned trial judge erred in law in ruling that her record of interview with police was admissible.
She also claims the learned trial judge erred in law in ruling that opinion evidence of an expert witness, State Forensic Pathologist Dr Donald Ritchey, was admissible on the trial.
She claimed the verdict was unsafe and unsatisfactory.
Maher also claimed that the sentence imposed was manifestly excessive in all the circumstances of the case.
In the police interview with Detective acting inspector Bob Baker Maher said she was concerned that her mother had not transferred money to her account.
"I was crying because I would be homeless on the streets," she said.
In the interview Maher could not explain how her mother's mobile phone travelled on the same aeroplane to Western Australia on October 5.
Ms Maher refused to comment about how she spent $12,000 that was transferred from her mother's account to her own.
Dr Ritchey gave expert evidence that he believed another person had been involved in Ms Corstorphine's death.
His opinion was a synthesis of information from his autopsy of Ms Corstorphine's body and observations from police body worn camera footage on the day her body was found on October 29, 2019.
While Dr Ritchey's report concluded that the cause of death was undetermined because of decomposition he said the position of the deceased body was important.
"She was supine and was obliquely oriented which did not look like she was sleeping," he said.
He said Ms Corstorphine's clothes were pushed up around her armpits and her face covered in a pillow.
Justice Michael Brett is expected to set a date at a directions hearing on Wednesday afternoon.
Nick Clark
I am the Supreme and Magistrates Court reporter for the Examiner for the past 18 months. My journalism career has clicked over 30 years and encompasses four different spells at Tasmanian newspapers.
I am the Supreme and Magistrates Court reporter for the Examiner for the past 18 months. My journalism career has clicked over 30 years and encompasses four different spells at Tasmanian newspapers.
