Peter Gleeson: Some people are born bad so let the little grub rot in jail

The soft sentence for a teenage menace who killed a happy couple and their unborn child while out walking their dog highlights an Australia-wide problem. They should be throwing away the key, writes Peter Gleeson.

There’s an 18-year old man languishing in a jail cell right now, having killed a young couple and their unborn baby while driving a stolen car, high on alcohol and drugs.

Before that fateful killing in Brisbane on Australia Day last year, the perpetrator had a 12-page rapsheet, a juvenile delinquent in every sense of the word.

We can’t name him because he was 17 when the offence of manslaughter was committed. So he will retain his anonymity for a crime that shocked the country.

He will also be out of jail on Australia Day, 2027, having served six years for a crime so heinous – so far reaching and evil – that it has sparked an outpouring of anger and grief. The teen ran a red light and collided with a truck before rolling and hitting the couple as they were out on an afternoon walk.

The families of Kate Leadbetter and Mathew Field gave victim impact statements to the sentencing court that were as raw and emotional as they were shocking.

Alexandra Hills couple Kate Leadbetter and Matty Field were killed by a teen driver in a stolen car. Their unborn child was also killed.

Kate’s mother Jeannie Thorne said she is now living another life – the life that she never wanted.

“I should be in my other life, the one that’s been ripped away,’’ she told the court.

All she wants is her old life back with her daughter, son-in-law and the prospect of being a grandmother to the boy they were going to call Miles.

Instead, they are living every parent’s worst nightmare, having to lay to rest two beautiful young souls, taken in the prime of their lives by a young man who was a menace to society and an accident waiting to happen.

It is little use debating the pros and cons of soft sentencing. On any measure, serving six years in jail for the callous disregard and loss of human life experienced during this tragedy is clearly not in keeping with community expectations.

There may be an appeal.

The teen grub cannot be named for legal reasons and will be out from jail in 2027.

This is an Australia-wide problem.

Everybody knows a similar case in their own backyard.

But Judge Martin Burns has a job to do, noting no sentence would ever be enough for the families, giving the offender a sentence commensurate with what the law allowed.

Here’s what I think. Throw the key away for the little grub. Let him rot in a jail cell forever. Change the law.

Mandatory life for such a terrible crime.

This cretin should never enjoy the comforts and luxuries afforded to law-abiding people.

His social licence has been revoked. Some people are just born bad. He is one of them.

Mind you, vigilantism is never the answer.

The teen runs from the scene on the day of the horror incident.

Yet, I’ve had several emails in the last few days from men suggesting they’d take justice into their own hands if it was their daughter and son-in-law.

It’s an emotive and some would say entirely natural response.

But the big question remains; How do we weigh up the rehabilitation prospects of a young man who clearly has no regard for the law, or for the general wellbeing of people?

Is this person capable of redemption, of being able to go straight and learn from this enormous tragedy?

Or is he to be forever consigned as bad to the bone, a threat to society, a person who will die early, either through his own actions or those of somebody else?

My sense, my fear, is that this guy is evil. As such, when he gets out in 2027, he’ll go back to his old ways.

Hopefully, I’m wrong. However, the real truth in this sad story is that two families, and the many friends of the dead couple, are living a life of sheer hell.

For that, there will never be justice.

Originally published as Peter Gleeson: Some people are born bad so let the little grub rot in jail