Source : Perth Now news
An international student who killed two Melbourne sex workers in less than 24 hours is facing a fresh legal fight that could increase his time behind bars.
Xiaozheng Lin, 25, was jailed for a maximum of 14 years in October 2024 after accepting a deal to plead guilty to manslaughter over the deaths of Yuqi Luo, 31, and Hyun Sook Jeon, 51, in December two years prior.
He had been due to face murder trials before prosecutors accepted his plea to the downgraded charges.
Lin appeared in the Court of Appeal on Monday as Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions Brendan Kissane KC argued that Lin’s sentence should be set aside, and a tougher one imposed, suggesting it was “manifestly inadequate”.
The court was told Lin had been sentenced to nine years in jail for killing Ms Luo and 10 years for Ms Jeon, with four years of his sentence for Ms Luo’s death to be served on top of the decade imposed for Ms Jeon’s.
Mr Kissane argued that while each penalty was in line with other manslaughter sentences in Victoria, the four years of cumulation was “just not sufficient”.
“It’s not enough to reflect two completely separate victims, two completely separate killings,” he said.
“The community could look at this as seven years with a non-parole period of 4½ for each.”
Mr Kissane argued that Lin’s killing of the two women was “just short of murder” in their seriousness.
In response, defence barrister Dermot Dann KC pointed to a High Court decision that found an appeals court could not substitute its opinion for the sentencing judge’s just because the court would exercise its sentencing discretion differently.
He argued the sentencing judge had taken “every relevant consideration into account”, submitting that Lin’s sentence was “entirely appropriate”.
“We say it has not been demonstrated that these individual sentences imposed by the learned sentencing judge are inconsistent in any way,” Mr Dann argued.
Justices Lesley Taylor, Peter Kidd and Jane Dixon reserved their decision and will hand it down at a later date.
Lin, then aged 22, was arrested on December 29, 2022, after police found Ms Luo’s body in her South Melbourne apartment on December 27.
Investigators then located Ms Jeon’s body at her Docklands home on December 30.
Sentencing Lin, Justice Stephen Kaye said he strangled Ms Luo in the early hours of the morning on December 27 after becoming angry when she demanded additional payment for oral sex.
He then took a shower before stealing money, handbags and electronics from her apartment.
Justice Kaye said later the same day Lin attended Ms Jeon’s home, having consensual sex for payment before fatally assaulting her, stealing her bank cards and leaving about 12.37am on December 28.
Justice Kaye said Lin’s attacks on the two women were “unprovoked”, and he’d left them “at the very least” in dire conditions without helping.
“As each of them lay helpless, and, at the least, in a severely debilitated state, in their own homes, you showed them no mercy, and you evinced no consciousness of the enormity of what you had just done to them,” the judge said.
“Instead, you callously set about taking from them not only their personal safety and dignity but also their valuable personal belongings.”
