APPEAL court judges have refused to reduce the nine-year jail term handed down to killer Eliska Novotna.
The 23-year-old stabbed her housemate to death after being involved in sex games at their home on a farm at Easter Happrew, between Peebles and Stobo. The Czech immigrant denied murdering Lithuanian Arunas Ramanauskas and after an eight-day trial in June was convicted by a jury of the lesser charge of culpable homicide.
At the appeal hearing her legal team argued that the nine-year sentence was too harsh and should be cut.
Mr Ramanauskas, 39, was stabbed six times on an October night in 2011. Novotna never denied she had stabbed him, but claimed she had been defending herself against his sexual advances.
He was found in a pool of blood in his bedroom and sex toys were discovered in a bedside cabinet. Novotna had tied a dressing gown cord over his eyes and round his neck before carrying out the stabbings.
Trial judge Lady Smith had told her: “A lengthy prison sentence is inevitable to mark the very bad conduct and the very terrible consequences of that conduct.”
But her QC, Jim Keegan, argued at the appeal court, before Lords Clarke and Brodie, that she had been acting in self-defence and that the punishment was too harsh.
However, his pleas were rejected by the judges.
Lord Clarke commented: “We do not regard the sentence in this case as excessive.”
He said they could not accept the QC’s arguments, branding the attack as ferocious and one which had gone beyond self-defence.