Kristian White: NSW police officer who tasered great-gran spared jail again

A former police officer who fatally tasered a 95-year-old aged-care resident while on duty will remain free after a failed legal bid to jail him.

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.

During the brief, two-minute and 40-second encounter, White drew his stun gun and pointed it at Mrs Nowland for a minute before saying “nah, bugger it” and discharging the weapon at her chest.

The 48kg great-grandmother, who had symptoms of dementia, fell and hit her head.She did not regain consciousness and died in hospital a week later after a fatal brain bleed.

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.

On Wednesday, three judges from the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal upheld the imposed sentence, dismissing the prosecution’s legal challenge.

At an appeal hearing in June, NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Sally Dowling SC argued Justice Harrison’s sentence was “manifestly inadequate” and that jail time was warranted.

She argued that the judge erroneously found that sending a strong warning to other police officers had only a minor role to play in sentencing.

But White’s barrister 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.