A bid to impose a harsher sentence and possible jail time on a police officer who fatally tasered an elderly aged-care resident with dementia has been locked in.
Then-senior constable Kristian James Samuel White fired his service Taser at Clare Nowland after being called to the Yallambee Lodge aged-care home in the early hours of May 17, 2023.
Crown prosecutors have since lodged an appeal against the “manifestly inadequate” sentence.
They argue that NSW Supreme Court Justice Ian Harrison made a number of errors in imposing the community corrections order instead of sending White to prison.
Today, a hearing for the crown’s appeal was scheduled for June 27 in the NSW Court of Appeal.
Registrar Peter Clayton’s offer of an earlier hearing date was not taken up by either crown or defence lawyers.
He suggested an earlier time, noting that White could be sent to jail as a result of the appeal.
“I can only imagine that’s playing on him,” he said.
Nowland, 95, who experienced symptoms of undiagnosed dementia and weighed less than 48kg, was holding a knife and using a walking frame when she encountered White.
White drew his weapon and pointed it at her for a minute before saying “nah, bugger it” and firing the weapon at her chest.
The great-grandmother fell and sustained a fatal brain injury.
In his judgment, Justice Harrison decided the need to deter other police officers from committing similar offences played “only a minor role” in his decision.
But prosecutors in their appeal believe he made a mistake in not issuing a strong warning to other police officers.
Prosecutors also claimed Justice Harrison erred when he found that White made a “terrible mistake” but his crime was less serious than other manslaughter cases.
The judge was wrong to conclude a jail sentence would be “disproportionate” to the seriousness of the offending, prosecutors allege.
Nowland’s eldest son Michael said White’s sentence was “very disappointing”.
“A slap on the wrist for someone who’s killed our mother – it’s very, very hard to process that,” he previously said.