Kristian White was sentenced to 450 hours of community service and placed under the supervision of a corrections officer for two years for manslaughter.
“Mr. White made by what any measure was a terrible mistake,” Justice Ian Harrison said in the New South Wales state Supreme Court.
Prosecutors had called for a prison term in the killing of Clare Nowland, a great-grandmother who suffered dementia, but the judge said such a punishment was disproportionate.
“It is … at the lower end of seriousness of crimes amounting to wrongful death,” Harrison said.
Given that the whole point of a device like that is they incapacitate without doing permanent harm, that sounds entirely reasonable at first glance.
Tazers and other less lethal means can still kill, and old people are fragile as hell. If you tazed 100 95 year olds I would bet money on more than half of them dying directly or shortly thereafter.
I definitely wouldn’t put money on 50/50.
Also, it was falling that hurt her, not the actual shock.
Is that not a direct and normal consequence of being tazed?
Often, yes. But the TAZER didn’t directly kill her, which is a subtle difference, but worth pointing out.