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Appeal today for Chicago woman who plotted Halifax shopping mall massacre

American Lindsay Souvannarath heads from provincial court in Halifax on Friday, March 6, 2015.Nova Scotia's top court will hear the appeal today of an American woman who plotted a Valentine's Day shooting spree at a Halifax mall. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

HALIFAX — Nova Scotia’s top court will hear the appeal today of an American woman who plotted a Valentine’s Day shooting spree at a Halifax mall.

Lindsay Souvannarath was jailed in April last year after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit murder in a 2015 plan to shoot people at the Halifax Shopping Centre food court.

The 26-year-old woman has argued in provincial Appeal Court documents that her sentence of life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 10 years should be revised to a fixed sentence of 12 to 14 years.

The Chicago-area woman has provided five grounds for appeal, including suggesting that the presiding judge committed an error by imposing a burden on her to prove she was remorseful and had renounced anti-social beliefs.

Souvannarath pleaded guilty in April 2017, about six months after Randall Shepherd — a Halifax man described in court as the “cheerleader” of the foiled shooting plot — was sentenced to a decade in jail.

A third alleged conspirator, 19-year-old James Gamble, was found dead in his Halifax-area home a day before the planned attack.

The conspiracy can be traced back to December 2014, when Souvannarath and Gamble began an online relationship.

The Canadian Press