Police officer who tasered 95-year-old found guilty of manslaughter, suspended without pay

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The police officer found guilty of manslaughter after tasering a 95-year-old woman has been suspended from the New South Wales police force. Kristian White tasered great-grandmother Clare Nowland causing her to fall and fracture her skull. She died in hospital a week later.

Transcript

00:00Senior Constable Christian White used his taser on 95-year-old great-grandmother Clare

00:06Nowland at her Cooma nursing home last May.

00:10At the time she was holding a knife and she'd been told several times to put that down before

00:15Christian White eventually said, nah, bugger it, and used his taser while she was slowly

00:20approaching the door of a nurse's room.

00:23He argued at his trial that Mrs. Nowland was presenting an imminent threat of danger and

00:27he was acting in accordance with his police duties, but yesterday a Supreme Court jury

00:32rejected that and found him guilty of a single charge of manslaughter.

00:36Now the court is dealing with the question of whether the police officer should be taken

00:40into custody ahead of his sentence proceedings, which are expected to begin in February.

00:45Today his defence counsel Troy Edwards has told the court that the judge has significant

00:50scope to determine the basis of liability consistent with the jury's verdict, and that

00:55was because in this case there were two separate paths that the jurors could have chosen to

00:59reach their result.

01:01Mr. Edwards also said that a full-time custodial sentence is not inevitable, and he submitted

01:06that the circumstances of this case mean that it's perhaps on the lowest end of the scale

01:11of seriousness for manslaughter charges.

01:14The Crown Prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC said that on any view of it, the jury has decided

01:19that Christian White's use of force was not reasonably necessary.

01:24Justice Ian Harrison has reserved his decision until tomorrow.

01:28He said that this case is unlike any other case that he's had to deal with in 18 years,

01:33and it will require more consideration because of the weighty and difficult matters that

01:38he needs to take into account.

01:40So that means that Christian White has another day before he'll learn whether he'll be taken

01:44into custody ahead of his sentence.

01:46The other thing we've learned today is that the NSW Police Force has cut Christian White's

01:51pay.

01:52Until recently, he has been suspended with pay, but that changed this week, and now he

01:56is suspended without pay.

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