Crown must appeal the Emery sentence

4 years, 3 months for manslaughter. Slaughter. He only slaughtered the kid. He's done almost three months in remand, so he'll be out in a few short years. Is that going to be satisfactory to the victim's family, or indeed the community?

The NZ Herald reporting is straight out of a right-wing conservative pressure group press release. The victim was a tagger and the stabber was defending himself - that is what the Herald says. Emery chased two kids down the street with a knife - several hundred metres - and then stabbed one of them who couldn't get away, killing him, he then fled the scene and washed his knife and pretended to his family - the same family used in mitigation of his crime - that nothing had happened. The survivor of Emery's attack described in his testimony that you could tell by the look on his face that he was out to kill. However the jury decided he was a manslaughterer but not a murderer:

The starting point for sentencing in a case where one person stabs another was five to seven years imprisonment, but with mitigating factors it can be reduced to three-and-half to four years. Justice Williams added he was unable to find a case of this nature.

Meaning it might be tricky to let the white guy off problematic to deliver a sentence on a defendant with vocal public backing - sold as the Pakeha version of Michael Douglas's angry white middle class American male character in the film Falling Down. It is difficult because all the other cases of this type are MURDER.

Remember that "New Zealand's Youngest Killer" is also a manslaughterer, but all this 12 year old did was say "now" while the bigger kid hit Michael Choy once with a baseball bat. He got 7 years for that. Seven years. Both cases in South Auckland. A 12 year old gets 7 years for participating in someone being hit with a baseball bat and the Sensible Sentencing Trustwant them in forever, but when an adult stabs and kills a 15 year old they only get 4 years and 3 months. And the SST stance on that?

Will Emery get put on their data base of violent offenders? Their motto is:
"Stop escalating violence in our community" - really.
Here's what the head of the Sensible Sentencing Trust had to say about this man who had killed this kid:

Trust spokesperson Garth McVicar says the verdict is a shame, because he understands the frustration Emery was going through when he caught the tagger at his house.
He says the trust would have liked to have seen Emery discharged altogether.

Well Garth will be disappointed Emery didn't get Home D. As for Justice Williams: how about aggravating circumstances?

Emery's aggravating circumstances of stalking his teenage prey with a weapon he selected, through the neighbourhood - what about that? That trifling little detail doesn't seem to merit much in the way of influence over the sentence. The use of a knife - if you believe the Herald account - was dismissed by Williams J as Emery being naive about how dangerous knives can be. Absurd. Emery selected it for its killing potential. Why did he grab anything? What did he think he was going to do with it when he got them? Emery's police interview on this point was less than convincing.

Many people might actually think that such piffling minor factual points cancel out all of these typically spurious mitigating circumstances ("family", "community standing" etc.) that white people use to get off tends to favour middle class defendants. We are back to the starting point at the very least, not talking about lopping years off already. The Crown must appeal the Emery Sentence.

If the judge is unable to find a case of a white middle class person stabbing a brown neighbourhood child and getting away with it, then he ought not try to be the one to establish it. There must be a more competent judge to set a higher sentence - one reflecting the seriousness of the offence.