Reporter: Liam Bartlett
Producer: Hugh Nailon
If anyone ever deserved a fair go, it was Nanette May. But after three years, she's still waiting.
Nanette was stalked by an ex-boyfriend, ambushed and brutally attacked. Left for dead.Eventually, he was charged with attempted murder and faced 25 years in jail.
But Karl Koch will only serve six.
When you hear what he did to Nanette, you'll ask why. How could he get off with such a paltry sentence?
Well, you can sum up the answer in two words — "plea bargain".
And Nanette May isn't alone. Across the country, courts are cutting deals with criminals — leaving their victims to wonder what on earth happened to justice.
Full transcript below:
STORY - LIAM BARTLETT: For Nanette May, going for a jog near her Sydney home is one of the simple pleasures of life. But this 50-year-old psychologist doesn't take it for granted. You see, Nanette is lucky to be alive. Viciously attacked and nearly killed by an ex-boyfriend, her fitness may well have saved her life.
NANETTE MAY: I was probably at a peak fitness for my age and I believe that, in being strangled, there was enough oxygen in my body to get me going again.
LIAM BARTLETT: This is Nanette May three years ago - bashed to within an inch of her life by this man, Karl Koch, an obsessive ex-boyfriend. Her right eye was split open and her top lip sliced in half. Her nose was broken, and the bruising on her neck is from where Koch strangled her.
NANETTE MAY: People say, "How did you feel when you were in the garage that night?" Because when you say to someone, "Oh, I was terrified", or, you know, "It was absolutely horrible," you have to multiply that by a thousand to get to how I was feeling inside the garage that night. It's beyond screams, it's beyond tears.
LIAM BARTLETT: Are you in any doubt that he was trying to kill you?
NANETTE MAY: No, I have no doubt what happened to me and I have no doubt what happened in the garage and that it was attempted murder.
LIAM BARTLETT: And that is what police thought, too. They charged Koch with attempted murder and spent two years building the case against him. But, on the eve of the trial, the prosecution accepted a guilty plea to the lesser charge of grievous bodily harm. Instead of the maximum 25 years, Karl Koch will serve just six.
NANETTE MAY: I'm furiously angry. I'm so angry. I've often said, like, I wish I could stand on the top of Mount Everest and scream so loud everyone in the world heard it, because it's so wrong.
LIAM BARTLETT: Nanette is just one of a growing number of victims of plea bargaining. 18-year-old Aaron Linskens was killed during a pub brawl in suburban Melbourne. His parents, John and Dianne, have endured seven years of disappointment with the legal system.
DIANNE LINSKENS: I feel just like I did the day that they turned my son's life-support off. It's exactly the same feeling. It's an absolute, the most devastating thing that you can ever go through in your life.
LIAM BARTLETT: It was closing time on a Saturday night, and the pub car park was out of control. The judge described it as "a soccer riot". Ryan Leigh Johns, already on a good behaviour bond for assault, was right in the thick of it. Aaron Linskens was just a frightened, innocent onlooker, yet, for some unexplained reason, Johns attacked him.
DIANNE LINSKENS: He was a normal human being, who deserved a life, and a man took that away from him with one roundhouse kick.
LIAM BARTLETT: Johns was charged with reckless murder but, on the fourth day of the trial, the prosecution suddenly announced it would accept a guilty plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter.
DIANNE LINSKENS: We watched the prosecution and the defence lawyers talking to one another up the front, and, you know, it's a club that I don't understand anything about.
LIAM BARTLETT: And you felt completely excluded?
DIANNE LINSKENS: Yes.
LIAM BARTLETT: The deal led to Ryan Johns being sentenced to just 3.5 years in prison.
DIANNE LINSKENS: Like every other mother in the world, all I wanted was a fair go for my son and plea bargaining... plea bargaining totally took that away from me. The courts took that away from us. The system took it away.
LIAM BARTLETT: On the face of it, the official reasons for plea bargains sound fair enough. It guarantees a conviction, spares the victims the trauma of going to court and avoids long, expensive trials. But the reality is they've become a cheap, easy way to justice, and the victims say it's the plea bargains that are cutting them out of the process. In the end, the deal between the offender and the system is not always a true reflection of what really happened. I've got to say I found these hard to look at.
NANETTE MAY: Yeah, yeah. I did too when I first looked at them.
LIAM BARTLETT: In Nanette May's case, a jury never got to see the reams of evidence police had gathered against Karl Koch, including these horrific photos. Do you look back on these photos and think, "Gee, I wish a jury had of seen these."
NANETTE MAY: Yeah, I really do, because it just feels as though no-one has really seen very much at all.
LIAM BARTLETT: Nanette met Karl Koch on the internet and, for a short while, they enjoyed a happy, normal relationship. But, when the affair ended, Koch turned nasty.
NANETTE MAY: It was intense harassment. The phones wouldn't stop ringing, the emails wouldn't stop coming in. It was absolutely, it was sort of like 'Fatal Attraction', only worse.
LIAM BARTLETT: For two years, he stalked and harassed Nanette and made this ominous threat over the phone.
NANETTE MAY: He phoned and said, "If I can't have your eyes and your mouth, then no-one's going to have them."
LIAM BARTLETT: One night, after work, Nanette arrived home at around 8:30. Waiting for her was Karl Koch.
NANETTE MAY: I knew I was being rushed, but it was like a split second, a split second of knowing that I was being rushed, and then the next thing was black.
LIAM BARTLETT: Behind the closed door of her own garage, Koch terrorised Nanette. Pinning her to the ground, he throttled her, only taking his hand off to bash Nanette's face. It curdles my blood to think that he had you behind that door, literally, attacking you.
NANETTE MAY: I remember holding on so long while I was being strangled, And I couldn't get any air in, and I couldn't move. It was... ..actually, as I'm talking about it now, I'm getting a bit emotional. It was horrible.
LIAM BARTLETT: But, with a guilty plea, the evidence supporting allegations of Koch's obsession and premeditation was reduced dramatically. Also omitted was evidence from two doctors that Nanette's cuts were caused by a knife because it couldn't be proved beyond reasonable doubt. So, overall, the whole thing was watered down...
NANETTE MAY: Yes.
LIAM BARTLETT: ..in your opinion?
NANETTE MAY: Yes.
LIAM BARTLETT: Completely watered down?
NANETTE MAY: Yes. Yeah.
LIAM BARTLETT: But they got their guilty plea?
NANETTE MAY: But they got their guilty plea. If you're going to be giving someone some discount for pleading guilty, put all the evidence in there, you know? Have the evidence there. What is amazing is you're getting the discount and then the evidence is being excluded from the sentencing hearings and, so, it's a total discount, It's almost like being let off.
LIAM BARTLETT: We tried to talk to NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery, but he refused to tell us why his department accepted a guilty plea. That left John Hatzistergos, the State Attorney-General, to answer some questions. Minister, the bloke who did this left her for dead and, because he got a plea bargain, he cops a discount, purely for pleading guilty.
JOHN HATZISTERGOS: Look, I'm not going to comment on the specifics of the case at this point, for obvious reasons. It's important, however, to ensure that all persons who are in a position where they have been the subject of a case which has involved such trauma to themselves don't feel re-traumatised by the criminal justice process.
LIAM BARTLETT: Why are we cutting more and more deals with criminals?
JOHN HATZISTERGOS: Well, they're matters for the
DPP. Ultimately, the DPP has to make a decision as to whether or not he can sustain a charge or not.
LIAM BARTLETT: But you're the State's number one law officer. Are you worried about the increase in the numbers or not?
JOHN HATZISTERGOS: In many of those cases, if the DPP cannot sustain a charge which has been laid, then it's not appropriate that it proceed to court.
NANETTE MAY: It seemed to be that they think, "Well, this is excellent - "a plea bargain is excellent "because it protects you from having to give evidence in court." I was always willing to give evidence in trial.
LIAM BARTLETT: But that day in court never came. Instead, Nanette spent much of her time in rehabilitation. She suffers post-traumatic stress disorder and a brain injury, which has permanently impaired her cognitive ability.
NANETTE MAY: Not having a very good time of it.
LIAM BARTLETT: Clinical psychologist Dieter Schlosser has been helping Nanette recover. Nanette was on the verge of doing her PhD. How far away is she from that?
DIETER SCHLOSSER: She would struggle.
LIAM BARTLETT: You're essentially saying she'll never be completely normal again.
DIETER SCHLOSSER: As I say, given the way the trauma occurred, I would doubt complete recovery.
LIAM BARTLETT: John and Dianne Linskens, parents of murdered teenager Aaron, say they are also suffering the consequences of plea bargains. This is the man who killed your son now attacking somebody else.
DIANNE LINSKENS: Oh.
LIAM BARTLETT: Just months after finishing his parole period for killing Aaron Linskens, Ryan Leigh Johns was at it again.
JOHN LINSKENS: The guy hasn't even had a chance to defend himself. That is pathetic.
DIANNE LINSKENS: That's what he did to our baby.
JOHN LINSKENS: To me, if someone shoots someone with a gun, they know what the gun's going to do and what damage the gun's going to do. He knows what damage a kick is going to do. He's killed someone and he does it again. There's no excuse for that, is there?
LIAM BARTLETT: So, for the third time, the serial kicker fronts court and, despite his record - despite the fact that he's already killed once - Ryan Johns is sentenced to just 12 months. But, get this, because he pleaded guilty and because it was an early plea, the court is prepared to offer him another bargain. This time, the discount is 30% off - he cops just eight months in jail.
DIANNE LINSKENS: Our child was worth so much more and every human being's worth so much more and unless somebody can stand up and say, "This is not the way to do it - this is wrong." And I'm terrified that there's going to be another family that's going to live what we live.
LIAM BARTLETT: Our legal system is not perfect, and it would be unfair to expect otherwise, but it would be reasonable to expect that people like Aaron Linskens and Nanette May feel like they get some form of justice. Instead, the outcome for Nanette is a lifetime of looking over her shoulder, waiting in fear for when Karl Koch is released, three years from now.
NANETTE MAY: I've just lost three years of my life since the crime started and, three years from now, I'm going to have to be completely worrying about my physical safety, whether I'm going to be hurt or killed. Not 'whether', but 'when' - when I'm going to be hurt or killed.
LIAM BARTLETT: So, you think when he's out of jail, he'll come after you?
NANETTE MAY: Yes, I do. Yes, I do.
