Australian court adds another year to Swedish woman's sentence

Sydney: Australian judges on Thursday added a year to the prison term of a Swedish woman convicted of soliciting a hit man to kill witnesses in her ex-boyfriend's drug trial. In the verdict, the panel of three appeals court judges called her original sentence of a minimum of two years "manifestly inadequate." Charlotte Lindstrom, 23, pleaded guilty last December to attempting to murder two witnesses after being arrested by an undercover policeman posing as a gun for hire. In March, a judge in a lower court gave the former waitress a lighter sentence, citing her early guilty plea and cooperation with police in giving information about other defendants. But the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal on Thursday sided with a prosecution appeal and increased her sentence to a minimum of three years. “She was fully aware that... [read full story]