Justin Smith: No words can justify these sentences
A man who stole from a charity will be home this Christmas while a bus driver who made a bad mistake won’t. We’ve lost perspective, writes Justin Smith.
Opinion
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It has been an exceptionally terrible week for justice in our courts. You would think nothing could surprise us, as we watch criminals get sentences as soft as velvet cushions. But with tragic irony, a bus driver from Ballarat has been given a punishment that is as harsh as it is inconsistent.
Jack Aston drove a bus into the infamous Montague St Bridge in 2016. It was a horrible scene with six people injured badly.
A jury found him guilty of “negligently causing serious injury” and on Monday, the County Court gave him more than five years in jail, with a minimum of two years and six months.
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Aston deserves punishment — no one would argue against that — but the weight of his sentence is staggering when you compare it against all the softness we’ve endured.
Sandro Cirianni was also in court this week, but he got a very different form of justice, even after stealing more than $200,000 from one of this state’s most adored charities.
Cirianni was a trusted general manager at Guide Dogs Victoria when he stole so he could drop a pool in his backyard, renovate his home and fill his selfish fat belly at restaurants.
He had to pay a meagre fine (about the cost of good pool- cleaning system) and got a Community Corrections Order. But last night, he slept in his renovated home and when the temperature hits the 30s next week for Christmas, he’ll be free to dive into the pool’s blue water. Meanwhile, Jack Aston is in a cell.
Luke Morin was in court this week. He’s a criminal with a historic fondness for firearms, crystal meth, assaulting police, drug trafficking and robbery.
Morin received a minimum sentence of two years and 10 months for shooting someone at an eight-year-old’s birthday party.
He’ll be inside for just four months longer than Jack Aston.
Jo Lim was in court this week. He was on bail and disqualified from driving when he smoked some ice at breakfast and smashed a ute into pharmacist Lisa Di Donato’s car and killed her.
Lim will have to serve only five years. Just a few more than Jack Aston.
And Emma Kent was in court this week. She was driving and distracted while changing music in her car when she hit and killed cyclist Gareth Davies. A tragic case for both Kent and the victim’s family. She will serve nine months in jail.
Importantly, Jack Aston did plead not guilty — which wouldn’t have helped him in sentencing — but there was no intent, there was no malice, no drugs, no violence, no death and he hit an object that has been hit so many times, it’s a wonder the bloody thing is still standing.
The severity of the sentence is astounding.
In May, we had to see the crying face of paramedic Paul Judd outside court while the two drunken skanks who bashed him and ruined his career were set free — despite “mandatory” jail laws for assaulting emergency service workers.
We’re also constantly reminded of the beautiful Jill Meagher. A few years before her death, the killer was found guilty of 16 counts of rape and only got eight years.
That’s just six months for each rape.
If the courts had reserved some of the same harshness for Adrian Bayley as they did for a country bus driver who hit a low bridge, Jill Meagher might still be with her husband and enjoying her life.
And in the past couple of years, we have seen two murders receive only 13 years for their crimes, including Jonathan Cooper, the man who murdered 90-year-old World War II veteran Ken Handford who was hogtied with the cord of his own dressing gown before he was stabbed multiple times and left to die.
Cooper was found guilty of murder, aggravated burglary and theft. All three crimes were rolled into one, with the ag burg melting into the murder sentence like a block of ice on a hot footpath.
I spoke to Jack Aston’s wife, Wendy, on radio this week. She visits him in jail to tell him that he’s loved and that they will fight to get an appeal, but they are broken people. He should get proper punishment and he certainly should never drive again, but he should not be locked up for three Christmases.
We’ve just had a state election that we thought would be fought on law and order. And we hoped that no matter who won, we would be going into 2019 with more faith in our legal system. But that hasn’t happened.
In reality, we still have the same aloof, untouchable, uber-academic wig wearers who have been letting us down for years.
And again this week, the legal system has shown us it is blind to our expectations.
We all need to be like those harnessed labradors, guiding it back to reality and explaining that we want sentencing to start representing our idea of punishment and mercy.
Justin Smith is a 3AW presenter and Herald Sun columnist
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