Ailing gangland matriarch Judy Moran cites health problems in appeal for freedom
GANGLAND widow Judy Moran is demanding to be freed from jail, saying she’s having flashbacks and nightmares.
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GANGLAND widow Judy Moran is demanding to be freed from jail, saying she’s having flashbacks and nightmares.
She also claims she needs several operations.
Moran, 71, has begged for her freedom in appeal court papers lodged against both her conviction for the murder of Des “Tuppence” Moran and her 26-year sentence.
The notorious inmate at Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Deer Park says the jail term for her role in the 2009 killing was “manifestly excessive” and reveals she lives in fear she will die behind bars.
She claims to be suffering mental health problems stemming from a past violent marriage and the deaths of her two sons in Melbourne’s gangland war.
She says it would be a “miscarriage of justice” not to reduce her sentence because she is suffering from diseased kidneys and a blood disease she claims is a mild form of leukaemia.
Wheelchair-bound Moran adds that she needs surgery on her spine, knee and right shoulder.
She claims it’s likely she also requires hip and possibly knee replacements, as well as “extensive investigation” into her lung function.
The appeal comes after Moran, who claimed earlier this year she had been injured twice in jail by guards, lost a bid to be moved back to an apartment-style unit from her single cell in prison.
In a signed affidavit seen by the Herald Sun, Moran lists more than 20 separate points about her extensive list of medical conditions.
Nine of the points she raises relate to her mental health, which she says has affected her ability to begin her appeal since being jailed.
“I have been diagnosed with adjustment disorder, characterised by anticipatory anxiety, depression, a sense of despair for the future and very low levels of self-esteem stemming from the course of my marriage to the late Lewis Moran from 1965 to 1995,” she says in the papers.
As well as an appeal against her sentence, her legal team, led by George Defteros, also argues three grounds for appeal against her conviction in the court papers.
They argue in the first ground for appeal that the trial judge “erred” by misdirecting the jury.
The second ground relates to the “unreliable” evidence of Tuppence Moran’s shooter, Michael Farrugia.
The final ground relates to the “failure of the prosecution” to disclose relevant material.