A notorious Canberra underworld matriarch and a one-time bikie boss have been found guilty of multiple offences, after they jointly held a man hostage and the bikie bashed him with a baseball bat.
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Sharon Ann Stott, 58, and former Canberra Satudarah president David Micheal Evans, 34, faced a judge-alone trial in the ACT Supreme Court earlier this year.
They both pleaded not guilty to charges of unlawful confinement, intentionally inflicting actual bodily harm and making a demand with a threat.
On Friday afternoon, Justice John Burns found Evans guilty on all three counts.
The judge found Stott guilty of unlawful confinement and making a demand with a threat, but he acquitted her of inflicting actual bodily harm and a further charge of attempted kidnapping.
The charges were laid after a January 2019 incident at the Kambah home of heroin dealer Catherine Hoswan.
In his judgment, Justice Burns found Stott and Evans had agreed to "stand over" the victim and detain him at the house in a failed effort to extort $20,000 from him.
Justice Burns said Stott had demanded the victim pay the fictional debt, while Evans threatened to bash the victim with a baseball bat.
The judge said he was satisfied Evans had ultimately hit the victim several times with the bat during the incident. But he found no evidence Stott had directed Evans to do this, noting Stott had actually tried to make Evans calm down "from time to time".
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The charge of attempted kidnapping, which Stott alone faced, related to allegations she had intended to cable tie the victim and take him to her house.
Justice Burns found Stott had expressed an intention to do this, but he acquitted her of the charge because he was not satisfied she had any cable ties or means of restraining the victim on her at the time in question.
During the trial, Stott admitted to being at the Kambah house when the incident occurred, but she claimed prosecutors had the story the wrong way around and that she was actually the victim of violence.
Evans' failed defence was that he was not there and therefore could not have been the baseball bat-wielding assailant.
After the verdicts were handed down on Friday, Crown prosecutor Keegan Lee asked Justice Burns to revoke Stott's bail.
Mr Lee said Stott had a history of very similar offending and was now likely to receive another jail sentence.
But Justice Burns decided to continue Stott's bail ahead of sentencing, noting she had turned up to court without fail throughout her trial.
Stott arrived at court more than half an hour late on Friday and was still wearing her sunglasses as she entered the courtroom.
She held her hands in the air as she left, protesting her innocence and yelling out "not guilty" to a Canberra Times reporter.
Evans is already serving numerous jail sentences that do not expire until March 2026. His current non-parole period does not run out until March 2023.
Stott and Evans are due back in court on September 30 to face a sentence hearing over the Kambah incident.
