• Home
  • Applications
  • FAQ
  • Get Involved
  • Links
  • Contact
  • donations
Menu

The Bridge of Hope Innocence Initiative

  • Home
  • Applications
  • FAQ
  • Get Involved
  • Links
  • Contact
  • donations
BH.png

Boronika Hothnyang 

February 8, 2019

Boronika Hothnyang was convicted of murdering her best friend AW in 2011 by stabbing him in the chest with a kitchen knife.  Boronika received a 14-year sentence. 

ABC’s Background Briefing recently investigated this case in Murder on trial: Was a Melbourne woman’s conviction beyond reasonable doubt? Background Briefing’s investigation revealed that: 

  • The knife strike was cleanly delivered between two ribs, piercing his heart 

  • Boronika had injured her dominant hand in a car accident several years before and was still receiving treatment for those injuries 

  • The same hand had been cut and injured in a domestic incident a few weeks before AW was stabbed 

  • Boronika was described as appearing heavily intoxicated by Department of Housing staff a couple of hours before the stabbing 

 

In an earlier article, Reasonable doubt? A murder in Dandenong’ published in The Age on 13 May 2018, journalist John Power reported on  

  • the reliability of the witnesses, particularly the only eye witness who has a history of dishonesty charges 

  • the lack of any forensic link between Boronika and the crime   

  • Contradictions between the eye witness who claimed that Boronika stabbed AW in a downwards action and the medical examiner who described a ‘knife wound with an upward trajectory’. 

  • Claims by two other witnesses that they were asleep at the time of the stabbing despite other evidence indicating they were awake shortly before.   

  • Claims by those same witnesses that they did not see AW’s body on leaving the flat just after the stabbing despite being in very close proximity.  

We believe that this case exhibits the hallmarks of a wrongful conviction. 

Tags Boronika Hothnyang
← When the law convicts an innocent personPerceptions of exonerees in Australia - New article in collaboration with ECU's Criminal Justice Review Project →