Taser cop kisses fiancee after judge’s custody decision

The police officer who Tasered great-grandmother Clare Nowland will remain on bail ahead of sentencing next year for the 95-year-old’s manslaughter, but has been told by a judge it is no indication as to whether or not he will receive a jail sentence.

Senior Constable Kristian James Samuel White was found guilty by a jury on Wednesday of the unlawful killing of Nowland after discharging his Taser in Cooma’s Yallambee Lodge nursing home on May 17, 2023. Nowland died in hospital seven days later.

Justice Ian Harrison on Friday refused an application by the Crown to detain White ahead of sentencing, with submissions to be made on February 7.

The judge said he did not want to “give unwanted hope to Mr White that he will avoid a sentence of full-time imprisonment or to cause distress or frustration to those whose reasonably available and strongly held view is that nothing less than such a result would be appropriate”.

“I am simply not comfortable making, and I am not prepared at this stage to make, a decision as a bail authority with respect to Mr White based on the conclusion he ‘will be sentenced to imprisonment to be served by full-time detention’ when that decision can, at present, only rest on materials that are not only unlikely to be complete but are certain to be incomplete,” Harrison said.

White is to be of good behaviour, not travel overseas and not approach or communicate with Nowland’s family.

White hugged and kissed his fiancee when court adjourned.

In arguing for White to be detained, Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, said a full-time custodial sentence was “realistically inevitable”. He submitted the jury had found White’s use of force “was not reasonably necessary”.