Lawyers back scheme to change the meaning of a life sentence
The NSW attorney-general will be presented with a proposal to change the meaning of a life sentence, in a move which could lead to the release of some very violent criminals.
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Lawyers are backing plans that would allow the state’s most notorious killers to have their life sentences reduced and overturn the meaning of life behind bars.
The dangerous plans would allow the killers of nurse Anita Cobby, the murderers of Janine Balding and rapists and double murderers Allan Baker and Kevin Crump, who tortured and killed young mother Virginia Morse, to seek leniency.
The NSW Bar Association believes that some offenders once considered hopelessly violent and dangerous can be safely released after “imprisonment, counselling and simple maturing”.
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The plans to turn justice in NSW back three decades before the Truth in Sentencing laws were introduced in 1990 come in submissions to a review in sentencing for murder and manslaughter ordered by Attorney-General Mark Speakman
The review being carried out by the NSW Sentencing Council follows public outrage at the release of heinous criminals including triple murderer Matthew De Gruchy, now 41, who was freed on parole in August last year after serving 23 years of his 28-year sentence for bludgeoning to death his mother and younger brother and sister.
Serial paedophile Michael Guider, who killed Bondi schoolgirl Samantha Knight, was released in September on an extended supervision order.
But the barristers’ peak body says it is a “misconception” that sentences handed down for murder and manslaughter are not tough enough.
The Bar Association and Legal Aid NSW have put in submissions backing lifers being able to apply for their sentences to be redetermined and for non-parole periods to be set for killers jailed for life.
The two legal bodies together with the Australian Lawyers for Human Rights also want the mandatory life sentence for the murder of a police officer on duty, introduced in 2011 and only imposed once, to be repealed.
“The crushing nature of a natural term life sentence with no prospect of release from prison has been long recognised, particularly for young offenders who given the general rate of life expectancy could potentially spend 50 years or more in prison,” the Bar Association states in its submission.
“The Association would support a scheme of judicial redetermination of life sentences.”
It said it would cover all the 49 prisoners serving natural life sentences in NSW and would let them keep trying with repeated applications to the NSW Supreme Court.
“Predicting future dangerousness is notoriously difficult and it has been remarked upon that the best point to assess an offender's dangerous is at time when the offender might be considered for release,” the association said.
Legal Aid NSW said families of murder victims would “require substantial support to understand and participate in the redetermination process” and the families would need “support and education” to fully understand the process of redetermining life sentences or introducing non-parole periods to life sentences.
The police are supporting the retention of mandatory life for killers of police officers and support a no-body no-parole law.
Tess Knight, Samantha Knight’s mother, said a killer’s debt could never be repaid. Guider was released without revealing where Samantha’s body was.
“The only way a convicted killer can satisfy their debt to society is for society to ensure no other person is ever exposed to the risk of being killed by a convicted murderer,” Ms Knight wrote in her submission.
Retired Long Bay maximum security prison officer Dominic Pezzano said: “A life sentence, should remain as a natural life sentence, with no non-parole period.”
The Sentencing Council said in its report that in 27 domestic violence murderers sentenced in NSW between April 2015 and March 2018, only one offender was sentenced to life. Out of the 100 murderers sentenced in the same period, five were jailed for life.
Submissions have now closed and the council is preparing its recommendations.
Originally published as Lawyers back scheme to change the meaning of a life sentence
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