By Sarah McPhee
The family of 95-year-old Clare Nowland is “struggling to understand” why her killer will remain on bail until he is sentenced next year for the Taser manslaughter, as the police officer’s lawyer says his client remains “entirely devastated” and acutely aware of their loss.
Senior Constable Kristian James Samuel White was found guilty by a jury on Wednesday of the unlawful killing of Nowland after discharging his Taser as she held a knife in Cooma’s Yallambee Lodge nursing home on May 17, 2023. Nowland died in hospital seven days later.
Senior Constable Kristian White with his solicitor Warwick Anderson (right) outside the Supreme Court in Sydney on Friday. Credit: Rhett Wyman
In a statement issued on Friday night, defence solicitor Warwick Anderson said White “extends his thoughts and prayers to the Nowland family”.
“Since that fateful morning, Kristian has tried to deal with the legal case against him, whilst confronting the pain that discharging his Taser ultimately resulted in Mrs Nowland’s death,” Anderson said.
“He has never lost sight of the fact that Mrs Nowland passed away, and he is acutely aware that the Nowland family is deeply hurt by what happened.
“Mr White gave sworn evidence before the Supreme Court in his trial, that he never intended for Mrs Nowland to be harmed or injured – and that he was, and remains, entirely devastated for the Nowland family’s loss.”
Clare Nowland was Tasered inside Yallambee Lodge in Cooma in May 2023.
Earlier, Nowland’s family said they were “disappointed that the court has refused to place Kristian White into detention after the jury found him guilty of Clare’s manslaughter”.
“The family is struggling to understand why the court felt it was appropriate to leave Mr White on bail and free in the Cooma community without any real restrictions in light of that conviction,” they said in a statement through their lawyer Sam Tierney.
Prosecutors had applied for White to be detained under a bail law for offenders who “will” be sentenced to full-time imprisonment, requiring their bail to be revoked ahead of sentencing, unless they can establish special or exceptional circumstances.
As he refused the application on Friday, Justice Ian Harrison said he did 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”.
The judge said he was not comfortable determining White’s bail “based on a conclusion he ‘will be sentenced to imprisonment to be served by full-time detention’” when that decision will rest on submissions and material “certain to be incomplete” ahead of a sentencing hearing on February 7.
As he remains on bail, White is to be of good behaviour; he must not travel overseas; and he must not approach or communicate with Nowland’s family. The 34-year-old hugged and kissed his fiancee after Friday’s decision. He did not comment as he left court.
The judge described the case as “unique” and “unlike any other that I have had to confront”.
“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 that he was not confronted with a serious threat at all,” the judge said.
“It was no more and no less than an error of judgment with fatal consequences.”
Harrison said he did not mean to minimise the seriousness of what transpired, but the consequences of the “mistake” were not the only factors to inform the future sentence.
“Mr White did not intend to kill or seriously injure Ms Nowland,” the judge said.
“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.”
Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, had submitted a full-time custodial sentence was “realistically inevitable” and that the jury had found White’s use of force “was not reasonably necessary”.
In opposing White’s detention, his barrister Troy Edwards, SC, argued it was open for the judge to find the offence was on the “lowest end” of the “scale of seriousness of offences of manslaughter”.
Harrison was not prepared to say it was “realistically inevitable” White would be sentenced to a full-time jail term “given the notoriously protean nature of manslaughter offences, and the extraordinary range of possibilities between 25 years’ imprisonment and a noncustodial sentence”.
He was “troubled” the decision to continue or revoke bail carries the “possible appearance of prejudgment when I finally come to decide what sentence to impose”.
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