A woman involved in hiding bullets linked to the shooting death of a NSW policeman was handed a manifestly excessive sentence, a court has ruled.
Tamworth Senior Constable David Rixon was fatally shot on the roadside in the NSW country town in March 2012.
Michael Jacobs was charged with his murder.
Not long after the shooting, Monica Sampson was travelling in a car with Jacobs' partner, Sharon Strudwick. Strudwick asked Sampson to speak to her son James on the phone, about police being poised to search their Tamworth home.
Sampson was sentenced to three years jail, with a non-parole period of 18 months, in 2012 after pleading guilty to hindering the discovery of evidence for a serious indictable offence.
However, she has had her sentence quashed by the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal (CCA) after it found it was excessive.
The details of Sampson's offence were detailed in the CCA's written reasons delivered on Friday.
In the phone conversation, intercepted by police, Sampson and Strudwick tell James to get the bullets from a handbag hanging on a door in the house.
Strudwick had asked Sampson to talk to James, as she was driving.
Sampson relayed information from Strudwick to James, including to put a box containing bullets down the toilet.
Having heard the conversation, police forced their way into the home, dug up the back yard and found the bullets in a sewer pipe.
The CCA found Sampson had strong subjective circumstances, including a history of abuse and domestic violence.
Sampson's upbringing in very difficult circumstances should be regarded as playing a role in her failure to resist Strudwick's request, the CCA stated.
There was also evidence Sampson suffered from depression.
The CCA found a 12-month jail sentence, with a suspended period, would have been warranted but Sampson had already spent 11 months in custody.
Sampson's appeal was allowed and her sentence quashed.
