Cop who tasered great-gran faces jail prospect again
Then-senior constable Kristian James Samuel White, 35, fired his Taser at Clare Nowland after being called to Yallambee Lodge nursing home at Cooma in southern NSW on May 17, 2023.
Mrs Nowland fell, did not regain consciousness and died in hospital a week later.
White was given a two-year good behaviour bond in March and ordered to complete community service after a jury found him guilty of manslaughter at a NSW Supreme Court trial.
This was despite prosecutors telling Justice Ian Harrison the 35-year-old should be jailed for his crime.
A legal challenge to the sentence was swiftly launched with prosecutors arguing that it was "manifestly inadequate" during a NSW Court of Criminal Appeal hearing in June.
That court will decide White's fate on Wednesday, either keeping him on his community sentence or placing him behind bars instead.
At the June hearing, NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Sally Dowling SC argued Justice Harrison erred when he decided not to send White to prison.
One alleged mistake was the judge's finding that sending a strong warning to other police officers had only a minor role to play in sentencing.
But White's lawyer Troy Edwards SC argued general deterrence had no role to play because his client made an error in judgment by believing Mrs Nowland posed a threat that justified the use of a Taser.
He said it was "nonsense" to think a police officer who held a similarly honest but unreasonable belief would be deterred from deploying their Taser as a consequence of White's sentence.
During the brief, two-minute and 40-second encounter, White drew his stun gun and pointed it at Ms Nowland for a minute before saying "nah, bugger it" and discharging the weapon at her chest.
Mrs Nowland, who weighed less than 48kg, suffered a fatal brain injury when she fell.
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