Jessica Silva appeals manslaughter conviction over the death of James Polkinghorne

A SYDNEY woman found not guilty of murdering her abusive ex-partner is challenging her conviction for the less serious offence of manslaughter.

Jessica Silva leaves the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal in Sydney on Monday. Picture: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

A SYDNEY woman found not guilty of murdering her abusive ex-partner is challenging her conviction for the less serious offence of manslaughter.

At her NSW Supreme Court trial, Jessica Silva’s lawyers submitted she should be acquitted on the basis that she was acting in self-defence when she stabbed James Polkinghorne to death on Mother’s Day 2012 in Marrickville in Sydney’s inner west.

In April last year, Silva spoke out about the ordeal to 60 Minutes.

She said she gets emotional and cries and she didn’t want it to end how it did.

She still had feelings for her first love, but the man he once was, not the one he became.

Silva was celebrating Mother’s Day with her son when Mr Polkinghorne, 28, turned up unannounced.

A brawl erupted on the street and she told 60 Minutes she went and got a knife.

“Just to scare him. I wasn’t thinking I was going to use it,” she said.

Silva said Mr Polkinghorne’s dark side would show when he didn’t have control and she recalled being choked against a wall during their relationship.

“Police came and asked me why I had red marks around my neck. I just said it was an allergic reaction,” she said.

“He (Mr Polkinghorne) said if I said anything to police it would cause some drama.”

Silva told 60 Minutes her former partner got more aggressive as time went on and he started belittling her, making her feel fat, ugly and like she wasn’t worth anything.

“Physically I’d be thrown across the room, held over the balcony, he’d pin me down, hold me down and just punch me ... kick me,” she said.

Police at the scene where James Polkinghorne was allegedly stabbed to death by former Jessica Silva.

In the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal on Monday, Silva’s barrister Gregory Scragg said the crown had not established beyond a reasonable doubt that Silva’s response was not a reasonable response in the circumstances as she perceived them to be.

Silva stabbed Mr Polkinghorne in his back and face after he turned up to her parent’s house in a violent rage fuelled by the drug ice.

The trial judge decided not to send Silva to jail, describing the case as exceptional with the killing “committed under extreme circumstances in the agony of the moment”.

Mr Polkinghorne had been abusive from an early point in their four-year relationship and by the afternoon of his death his verbal abuse was coming thick and fast.

“I’m going to cave your f***ing head in,” he wrote, adding an hour later, “I’m gonna break your f***ing jaw ‘cos you’re a dog.”

Mr Scragg told the Appeal Court judges Silva believed Mr Polkinghorne had previously shot and killed Nikolas Argiropoulos, whose body was found in a park.

And she believed she was protecting herself and her family when she killed him.

“She was entitled to defend herself and what she did, in the circumstances, was entirely reasonable,” he said.

Ultimately, her action was not unlawful because she was acting in self-defence, he submitted.

Silva, who is supported by family members, is at the appeal, which is continuing.