Last year a jury found former NSW Police officer Kristian White guilty of the manslaughter of 95-year-old Clare Nowland, who he tasered at her nursing home in 2023.
Ms Nowland, a dementia patient, was roaming around the facility on her walker while “armed” with a steak knife when police were called, and after an impatient White deployed his stun gun she fell and hit her head, dying of a brain bleed in hospital a week later.
Today, White was spared jail by NSW Supreme Court Justice Ian Harrison, who gave him a two-year community correction order and 425 hours of community service, on the grounds that the crime was not premeditated and fell on the lower end of objective seriousness, and that White had no risk of reoffending, was not a risk to the community, had shown remorse, would suffer in prison as an ex-cop, and had already suffered consequences such as job loss.
The Nowland family described the sentence as a “slap on the wrist”, “disappointing”, and “very hard to process”.
I suspect that most Australians would sympathise with her loved ones, and feel that tasing a frail 95-year-old woman resulting (unsurprisingly) in her death should result in at least some jail time.
Indeed, if killing grandmas does not warrant a prison sentence, what does?
If you believe Justice Harrison’s reasoning was fair, how do you justify jailing people for crimes that do not result in death?
How do you justify, for example, keeping two war veterans behind bars for weeks for displaying war memorabilia?
The pair were exonerated in the end, of course, but I doubt they will forget their time in Sydney’s remand prison system, which by all accounts is horrific.
How do you justify keeping Stephen Wells in prison for two months and counting for peacefully participating in the wrong type of demonstration in Adelaide on Australia Day?
How do you justify Australia’s new “hate crimes” laws, which impose mandatory minimum jail sentences of 12 months for displaying symbols or making gestures that hurt the feelings of minority groups?
You cannot, of course, no matter what kind of mental gymnastics you attempt, for it is just not possible to defend a system that jails someone for a political salute, but not for killing a defenceless grandmother.
Stalin’s secret police chief Lavrentiy Beri famously said “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”, an open boast that he could turn the presumption of innocence on its head to find anyone guilty of anything he likes in order to achieve his political aims.
Our current state of anarcho-tyranny means that a similar process often occurs here – there are so many vague laws that the police can almost always find something to charge you with, ala Stephen Wells and co. – but we are not yet at reign of terror levels.
Instead what we see here could be more fairly summed up with “show me the man and I’ll show you the sentence”, as sentences seem to be overwhelmingly determined not by the natures of the crimes, but by what group the perpetrator fits into.
Courts obviously need to take a criminal’s personal circumstances into account, but clearly what we have developed here in Australia is a two-tier justice system, where if you are from a protected class – eg. police, politicians, minorities – you get looked after, while if you are not the law is merciless and unrelenting.
This is no exaggeration.
If you’re an immigrant criminal, magistrates will deliberately give you short sentences so you won’t be automatically deported, even if you’re a paedophile.
If you’re a politician, a traitorous military officer, an ASIO agent, a high-ranking cop, or rich enough, you’ll get the same preferential treatment due to your status, and you’ll probably also get your name suppressed so it will be illegal to report on your crimes, even if you do get sent to jail.
But if you’re a normal person with non-system-approved ideas you get hit with mandatory minimum sentencing laws brought in to appease the same minorities who get the aforementioned special treatment, trial by media, and harsh treatment by police and the courts.
This is a dangerous situation, as it risks totally delegitimising the justice system in the eyes of everyday Australians, and by extension our entire system of government.
If the people in charge had any sense at all they’d do their utmost to reverse this, but I won’t be holding my breath.
Header image: Kristian White.
