Jail is not “inevitable” for the NSW police officer convicted of manslaughter for fatally shooting a 95-year-old woman in a nursing home with a Taser, the Supreme Court heard Friday.
But Sen Const Kristian James Samuel White should not hold “unwarranted hope” he will necessarily avoid imprisonment, Justice Ian Harrison said in continuing the officer’s bail until sentencing next year.
Harrison said the case was unlike any other he had encountered over nearly two decades on the bench.
“This case is unlike any other that I have had to confront. It is unique in my experience, not merely rare or unusual,” he said.
White was found guilty, in a unanimous jury verdict, in the NSW supreme court on Wednesday.
White, 34, had used a Taser to shoot great-grandmother Clare Nowland, who was armed with a serrated knife and threatening police and staff at her Cooma nursing home in May 2023. She died a week later from head injuries sustained when she fell backwards from the force of the Taser.
During a brief court hearing on Friday, Harrison continued White’s bail on the conditions he remained of good behaviour, did not travel overseas, and did not communicate with Nowland’s family
White will return to court in February for sentencing.
Harrison told the court he was not in a position to make a decision on White’s ultimate liberty, but that a jail sentence was not “inevitable”.
“I should not want to give unwarranted hope to Mr White that he will avoid a sentence of full-time imprisonment or to cause distress or frustration to those whose reasonably available and strongly held view is that nothing less than such a result would be appropriate.
“I am not prepared to say, in what I consider to be an acceptably judicial way, that it is realistically inevitable that Mr White will be sentenced to imprisonment to be served by full-time detention.”
The judge commented on the “notoriously protean nature of manslaughter offences” and the “extraordinary range” of sentencing options available to the court: from 25 years imprisonment to a non-custodial sentence.
“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 or appreciate that he was not confronted with a serious threat at all. It was no more and no less than an error of judgment with fatal consequences.”
The judge said White did not intend to kill or seriously injure Nowland.
“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. The fact that the jury’s verdict represents a conclusion that Mr White’s actions should be punished as a crime does not alone foreclose upon the ultimate sentencing outcome.”
The prosecution had applied for White to be detained ahead of sentencing next year, arguing the police officer’s imprisonment was “realistically inevitable”.
But White’s defence barrister, Troy Edwards SC, argued his client’s bail should be continued until he is sentenced and invited the judge to consider that the manslaughter offence was the “lowest end” in terms of seriousness.
Evidence filed with the court showed that were White to be jailed, he would be placed into protective custody because of his status as a police officer.
“The prisoner would be classified as ‘protection non association’ meaning he will not be in the physical presence of other inmates at any time,” DS Mitchell Bosworth of the homicide squad wrote.
NSW police announced on Thursday morning that White was suspended from the force without pay after his conviction. His employment with the police force is still under consideration.
“Regarding the officer’s position in the NSW Police Force, the NSW Police Commissioner is following the procedure mandated under the Police Act 1990, s181D,” the police said in a statement on Thursday.
The section of the act referred to states that the police commissioner can remove an officer from the force if they “do not have confidence in the police officer’s suitability to continue as a police officer”.
