Lawyers for Exposto had argued on Tuesday morning the Sydney woman's behaviour had been "totally consistent with innocence" and that when an officer had suggested she had ice in her bag, she had replied that the ice would have melted. Defense lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah said Exposto had been taken into immigration custody because her visa has expired. Australian Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto, centre, is escorted during a court hearing in Shah Alam, Malaysia, in 2017. Credit:AP After the verdict, Muhammad said that "she is innocent. We always believed she is innocent". "This judgement has a high impact. It will be an eye opener for judges ... This is an illustration, [of] how an innocent woman can be scammed on the internet," Shafee said.

Shafee said immigration authorities would hold Exposto in custody for a couple of days. In total, Exposto had spent nearly five years in jail in Malaysia after she was found carrying more than 1 kilogram of crystal methamphetamine, also known as ice, at Kuala Lumpur's international airport in 2014. Her defence lawyers had argued she was the victim of an internet romance scam by a man who claimed to be a "Captain Daniel Smith", a US soldier stationed in Afghanistan. When she had travelled to Shanghai, China, to meet Smith he did not show up, but a friend of his did and convinced her to take a black backpack on her trip. It contained the ice and was discovered during her flight transfer in the Malaysian capital.

Exposto had initially been found not guilty by a lower court in 2017 but an appeal by prosecutors was successful and the mother of four was sentenced to death. Her case had been complicated by the fact that Malaysia is preparing changes to its laws that mean the death penalty was not mandatory for certain offences. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad recently told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that his government had wanted to abolish the death penalty completely, but there had been protests over such a move. Mahathir Mohamad told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age he was hoped to eradicate the death penalty in Malaysia. Credit:James Massola Instead, the government was working through changes to the legal code so the punishment would not be mandatory while also grappling with the question of what to do with the approximately 1000 people on death row in Malaysia.

In 1986, Australians Brian Chambers and Kevin Barlow were hanged by Malaysia for trafficking about 140 grams of heroin. They were the first westerners to be executed under the country's tough drug laws and the executions caused significant damage to relations between Malaysia and Australia. With agencies