Aboriginal health leader Donna Nelson has lost her appeal in the Japan High Court against her drug smuggling conviction.
Ms Nelson is serving a six-year prison sentence after being found guilty of smuggling nearly two kilograms of methamphetamine into Japan via Narita Airport in January 2023. The long-time health advocate and former chair of the Derbarl Yerrigan Health Service has consistently maintained her innocence, claiming she was duped by an online romantic partner.
Japanese authorities discovered the drugs concealed in a suitcase she collected during a stopover in Laos. Ms Nelson said she picked up the bag at the request of her online partner, a man known as Kelly, who claimed to run a fashion and travel case business in Japan.
She said she believed the suitcase contained fashion samples for Kelly's business.
However, a Japanese court in Chiba ruled last December that Ms Nelson was negligent. While the court did not find she had willfully brought in the drugs, it concluded Kelly's story should have raised suspicions.
Her sentence includes the 430 days already spent in custody before the verdict. Japan's legal system — which has a conviction rate of over 99 per cent — limits public court hearings, and Ms Nelson was only able to communicate externally through her legal team.
On Thursday, the High Court rejected her appeal, the ABC reported, ruling that Ms Nelson must have had doubts about the "strangeness" of being asked to bring a bag into Japan on someone else's behalf, labelling the request "unnatural".
Her defence submitted new expert evidence from a romance scam specialist, but it was dismissed on the first day of the appeal in July.
"Ms Donna Rose Nelson was a blind mule," the appeal submission from expert Dr Monica Whitty said, arguing it was hindsight bias to claim Ms Nelson should have known it was unusual to carry the bag for Kelly.
"I do not doubt that Ms Nelson was manipulated in this manner and that she was not aware of any involvement in drug trafficking."
At her original trial, Judge Masakazu Kamakura noted Ms Nelson had failed to verify the bag's contents and did not declare it as someone else's property.
The court also noted she listed "business" as her reason for visiting Japan, which the prosecution argued undermined her credibility. Ms Nelson told the court she felt embarrassed to say she was travelling to meet her romantic partner.
"If I had known or even suspected illegal drugs were in the suitcase, I would have never agreed to carry it," Ms Nelson told the court last year.
The ABC reported Ms Nelson's family will now seek to have her transferred to Australia under a prisoner swap arrangement.
