Nowland family ‘struggling to understand’ why Taser cop isn’t behind bars
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The judge described the case as “unique” and “unlike any other that I have had to confront”.
“Ms Nowland’s death resulted from what was on almost any view a failure by Mr White correctly to assess the seriousness of the threat confronting him, or on another view, a failure to recognise that he was not confronted with a serious threat at all,” the judge said.
“It was no more and no less than an error of judgment with fatal consequences.”
Harrison said he did not mean to minimise the seriousness of what transpired, but the consequences of the “mistake” were not the only factors to inform the future sentence.
“Mr White did not intend to kill or seriously injure Ms Nowland,” the judge said.
“Mr White did not act out of anger, or malice, or revenge, or retribution, or envy, or jealousy, or avarice, or greed, or some misplaced desire to inflict harm or to avoid detection for some crime. Mr White made a significant mistake in the course of his work.”
In his judgment, Harrison acknowledged Nowland was 95 years of age, “physically frail and required a mobile walker”.
Asked under cross-examination at trial whether Nowland looked frail, White said Nowland was “not the frailest I’ve seen”.
In arguing for White to be detained, Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, said a full-time custodial sentence was “realistically inevitable”. He submitted that the jury had found White’s use of force “was not reasonably necessary”.
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In opposing White’s detention, his barrister Troy Edwards, SC, argued it was open for the judge to find the offence was on the “lowest end” of the “scale of seriousness of offences of manslaughter”.
Harrison said he was not prepared to say it was “realistically inevitable” White would be sentenced to a full-time jail term “given the notoriously protean nature of manslaughter offences, and the extraordinary range of possibilities between 25 years imprisonment and a noncustodial sentence”.
He said he was “troubled” that a decision to continue or revoke White’s bail carries the “possible appearance of prejudgment when I finally come to decide what sentence to impose”.
White had been suspended with pay in the 18 months to the verdict, but is now suspended without pay, police said in a statement. NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb said she would be considering whether to remove White from the force.
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