How can a judge be allowed to sit on a case where they have previously stated beliefs towards sentencing for aboriginal offenders. Can you imagine the uproar in the US if a judge who'd made statements in previous judgements about blacks was put on a black man's murder case?
News.com.au wrote: Dark side of justice
Article from: Herald Sun
Andrew Bolt
March 11, 2009 12:00am
ANOTHER child rapist walks free. And the question is now urgent: how dangerously racist are our courts?
Two years ago a 24-year-old man broke into a house near Yamba and went to a room where a four-year-old girl was sleeping.
He stepped out of his underpants and stripped the girl, who told him to go away. The man instead digitally penetrated her and masturbated.
Now let me tell you the jail time the NSW District Court imposed. Not a day.
To be precise, Judge Chris Geraghty gave the rapist a two-year suspended sentence, so he could walk free.
You may already suspect, as I did, why such a shocking crime got such a light sentence.
Yes, the judge says he merely took into account the man's remorse, his plea of guilty, and the lack of premeditation of a rape that was "a moment of drunken madness".
But for me the words that rang loudest were these: "(The rapist) is a man of Aboriginal origin ..."
No doubt, to speculate that a rapist was treated with undeserved mercy because he was black will prove to some I am racist.
But it seems to me that the true racism lies in our courts, which now boast judges who openly declare they treat Aboriginal offenders differently. Meaning more leniently.
I am not talking merely of misguided attempts by some judges to embrace tribal law when sentencing Aborigines out bush, although that is often racist, too, and can leave Aboriginal woman without the protection we'd give them if they were white, Asian or African.
Take the case of Jackie Pascoe Jamilmira, a 50-year-old who'd beaten his first wife to death and was charged in 2002 with the violent rape of a 15-year-old girl he said was promised to him under tribal law.
Justice John Gallop sentenced Jamilmira to just one day in jail, saying the 15-year-old "knew what was expected of her" and her rapist was merely "exercising his conjugal rights in traditional society".
Such "justice" is unjust enough. What hope did this Aboriginal girl have of protection from her attacker, when even a white judge ruled she "knew what was expected" and thus should submit, as no woman of any other race would have to?
But what troubles me even more are the cases where no arguments about tribal law could apply.
In Queensland in 2002, District Court Judge Sarah Bradley recorded no conviction against four teenagers who'd sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl in a Thursday Island toilet. The offenders and their victim were all Aboriginal.
In 2007 she again recorded no conviction, this time against six teenagers who'd had sex with a 10-year-old at Cape York, and she gave only suspended sentences to two older teenagers and a 26-year-old who'd also raped the girl, leaving her with gonorrhea. Again, all were black.
Bradley explained her leniency (to the rapists, not the victim) like this: "the girl ... probably agreed to have sex with all of you." Note: this girl was just 10, and had also been raped at seven.
But I think the best explanation for her mercy lies in a talk on "indigenous justice" she gave as president of the Australian Association of Women Judges.
"The statistical facts highlight why indigenous offenders should be given special consideration in courts. Indigenous people are over-represented in the criminal justice system in every Australian jurisdiction," she said.
Bradley means to do good, as her career proves. But her logic is as clear as it is racist: judges should give Aborigines "special consideration" by being slower to jail them for crimes they are in fact more likely to commit.
Bradley is far from alone in arguing justice now should not be colour-blind.
West Australian Supreme Court judge John McKechnie in December sentenced Mathew Roy McDonald to just five years' jail for the manslaughter of Bill Rowe, who'd been at a beach picnic with his family when he asked McDonald to give back a cricket bat he'd stolen.
McDonald instead used the bat to smash in Rowe's skull in a fight that not only killed the farmer, but left his daughter's fiance with a broken jaw and collarbone.
McDonald already had a record for violence, including unlawful wounding, for which he'd been given a nine-month suspended sentence. So why wasn't he jailed for much longer?
He pleaded guilty, yes, but the judge added: "You are an Aboriginal person. I am well aware of the disadvantages faced, particularly by young Aboriginal men. It is a notorious fact, one which should fill all members of this West Australian community with shame, that although comprising only 3 per cent of our population, Aboriginal people comprise 45 per cent of our prison population ...
"(W)e have probably become desensitised to the depths of abuse suffered by Aboriginal children in their journey to adulthood. Your background is typical in that respect and needs to be factored into any sentence ..."
Such race-based excuses don't just give get-out-of-jail-early cards to dangerous men, along with a sense of grievance. They also discredit the law in the eyes of many citizens. They are racist, and therefore unjust.
Here's yet another example, this time from South Australia. In January, Stephen Phillip Lawrence Harradine got a minimum sentence of just 28 months for killing a man with a punch.
True, Supreme Court judge Tim Anderson did say Harradine's Aboriginality did not entitle him to "special treatment" - or did he?
Rewind the tape: "Aboriginal offenders cannot expect to receive special treatment ... But it's a factor that can be relevant to the sentencing process. Aboriginal people have been marginalised by our society and have, as a result, lacked some opportunities in life."
So Aborigines can't expect special treatment, but can. Which is why Harradine's lawyer asked for an Aboriginal Sentencing Conference - a round-table conference of "restorative justice" where being Aboriginal would be relevant.
Ah, yes. You didn't know we actually have Aboriginal courts now? A justice system that is officially racist?
Indeed we do. South Australia now has Nunga Courts, Queensland has a Murri Court, Western Australia has Aboriginal Courts, NSW has "circle sentencing" and Victoria has not only seven Koori Courts and two Children's Koori Courts, but last year got a County Koori Court too, to hear serious cases.
We are told the justice handed out by black courts is precisely the justice the defendants would get from a "white" court, only delivered more sensitively.
But there's reason to doubt such well-meaning assurances. Listen to Rob Hulls, Victoria's Attorney-General, who said "Koori Courts are ... designed to tackle the problem of the over-representation of the indigenous community in the justice system".
Or hear it from federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin, who said Queensland likewise had "a target of reducing indigenous incarceration rates by 50 per cent by 2011".
Hulls and Macklin will say they merely want to cut the number of black prisoners by making the courts more effective, and justice more meaningful.
But their targets and the anecdotes suggest a different tale - that our courts are trying to cut not black crime, but black time in jail.
We now see the result: black offenders appearing to get softer sentences than would whites for the same crimes. And Aboriginal victims - girls and women especially - getting less protection.
That's racist. And the victims of this "good" racism are, ironically, the very same that suffered from the bad.
