MORE than two years after she was found guilty of stabbing Jason Adams to death at Raymond Terrace, Lily Ridgeway will attempt to have her conviction overturned as part of an appeal to the state's highest court.
Ridgeway, now 25, was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter, a jury rejecting her self-defence claim, after two trials in NSW Supreme Court in 2021 and 2022.
And now more than two years after she was convicted of killing Mr Adams, lawyers for Ridgeway have lodged an appeal against her conviction and the severity of her jail term in the Court of Criminal Appeal.
The all grounds appeal was mentioned in the CCA last week and a hearing was set down for May 3.
Mr Adams was unarmed, alone and posed "no threat" to Ridgeway when he arrived at a house in Payton Street, Raymond Terrace in the early hours of February 29, 2020.
But a traumatised background of domestic violence, a childhood of dysfunction and disadvantage, drug use and the fact she hadn't slept in 10 days meant Ridgeway was in an emotionally dysregulated state and conditioned to see danger and violence all around her.
So when Mr Adams made a slight move towards her or grabbed her by the jacket, Ridgeway reacted to a threat that was not real and responded by stabbing him once in the chest, the blade penetrating his heart.
He stumbled down the road, collapsed in the middle of an intersection and died.
"While this was an entirely needless killing," Justice Helen Wilson said. "Ms Ridgeway's act was the culmination of long years of trauma, violence and abuse. Even though, on the objective and reliable evidence, Mr Adams posed no real threat to her, Ms Ridgeway was primed to see danger all around her, her perceptions distorted by the drug use in the previous days and her response was an instinctive one."
Ridgeway was acquitted of murdering Mr Adams after a trial in 2021, but after deliberating for more than 45 hours the jury was deadlocked on the alternative charge of manslaughter.
