Despite retaining the guilty plea he entered on multiple charges of perjury, the infinitely curious Nelly Yoa will not serve jail time after having a previous five-month sentence squashed by an appeals judge in Melbourne this afternoon.
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Yoa was initially sentenced to five months in jail in June on two counts of perjury – charges that he willingly pleaded guilty to – stemming from a pair of wild and truly absurd false police reports he made.
In the first incident, made in 2016, Yoa called police and claimed that a woman had threatened him with a knife at his Dandenong home, despite the woman he accused of the act being at the movies in South Yarra at the time Yoa’s claim.
In the second, Yoa told police the same woman showed him a gun in the Melbourne CBD, which lead to – according to Yoa – a wild foot chase through the Melbourne city streets. CCTV footage examined by police later revealed neither Yoa, nor the woman he accused, were in the CBD on the day Yoa claimed the incident took place.
Today, Judge Trevor Wraight overturned the initial jail sentence handed to Yoa in June – in circus-like proceedings that frequently veered into farcical territory – instead being levelled with a three-year community corrections order which Judge Wraight freely admitted he’d made intentionally difficult to comply with in order to ensure Yoa toed the line while serving it.
Yoa appeared in court today to hear the appeal and tearfully thanked the judge for his leniency, stating “Thank you, your honour, for this opportunity. I’m highly remorseful to you about my stupidity.”
No jail sentence. Still guilty of perjury. And that’s the end of that chapter.
