Two deaths, two women before the courts, but just one jail term (and a light one at that)

Alf is bothered by two reports from the courts today. He regards them as an invitation to women to do their menfolk a mischief with the reasonable expectation they won’t be too heavily punished, especially if they can come up with a good sob story.

In one case, the woman won’t be punished at all after being cleared of the manslaughter of a West Coast publican.

She was found guilty of hitting the publican, so there is no doubting there was an assault. The judge nevertheless discharged her.

Carmel Whittle, 38, started crying and said, “Thank you, thank you” in the dock of the High Court in Greymouth after a jury returned its not-guilty verdict at 8.20pm yesterday.

Whittle was found guilty of assaulting Little Wanganui Hotel publican David White, 42, and was convicted and discharged on that count.

According to the Crown, Whittle punched White during an argument at the hotel on July 3 last year, tearing an artery in his neck, which caused his death.

In closing arguments yesterday, Crown prosecutor Phil Shamy said Whittle had killed White with an “unlucky punch”.

Whether the punch was intentional was irrelevant because the Crown did not have to prove Whittle intended to kill White, he said.

The evidence to prove Whittle assaulted White was “overwhelming”.

Defence counsel Pip Hall, on the other hand, said the case had followed a tragedy and an extraordinary chain of events.

Essentially, he argued that the blow struck by Whittle had not caused the publican’s death.

He said he hoped the community would now be able to begin healing.

The publican victim is a bit beyond healing, however.

The same goes for the bloke who was fatally stabbed in the chest by his female partner, who has been jailed for just eight years on a murder rap.

Jacqueline Elaine Wihongi, 33, “self-medicated” with alcohol after a tragic “history of victimhood”, a court was told yesterday. She is believed to be just the second person to receive less than a life sentence for murder.

Wihongi was found guilty in June of murdering her partner of 17 years, Vivian Hirini. But in the High Court at Napier yesterday, Justice John Wild said it would be manifestly unjust to sentence the mother-of-six to life imprisonment.

Women’s Refuge has hailed the decision as “brave and right”, and the justice minister says there are no plans to review the law that allowed the sentence.

Under the Sentencing Act 2002, finite penalties were made available for murder if a life sentence would be “manifestly unjust”.

In this case, Wihongi stabbed Hirini in the chest after an argument on June 5 last year. He drove away but collapsed over the steering wheel and bled to death.

Her lawyer said she posed no threat to society and the murder was the result of the violent relationship she had with Hirini, the father of five of her children.

Police were often called to attend to their altercations, which were often physical. Mr Hirini had been stabbed by her previously and had lost an eye when she hit him with a bottle.

Mr Fairbrother held up a thick ringbinder containing more than 500 pages of police reports on domestic incidents between the couple.

He provided the judge with three psychiatric reports and a psychologist’s report, and said alcohol was a way of self-medicating to overcome recurring thoughts about her tragic past.

Maybe so.

But she could always exercise the simple option of buggering off from this bloke to escape the violence.

At least, it is fair to suppose she could have reached that decision during moments of sobriety, although these might have been rare.

And it should be noted that she had had the gumption and strength to knock the bugger’s eye out on one occasion.

Crown lawyer Steve Manning said this was not a case of “battered woman syndrome” and Wihongi had directed significant violence toward Mr Hirini in the years leading up to the murder.

Wihongi knew she got violent when she drank, he said, and her alcohol consumption should not be taken into account as to do so would “open the door” for the same argument to be made by others who murdered while under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

The judge came down on the namby-pamby side of considerations – no, he could not consider Wihongi’s alcohol consumption on the night as a mitigating factor, but she had an “alcohol abuse disorder” and had been a heavy drinker since she was 13.

She was socially inept unless drunk and could not have sex without alcohol, he said.

She had significant impairment from a drug overdose when she was 13, and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression because of several rapes and a home invasion.

The judge said Wihongi regretted killing Mr Hirini. The reports made it clear her condition was treatable. “I consider you as a person both deserving of help and who can be helped.”

She had been a good mother and there was “a real prospect that you can be restored as a worthwhile member of society”.

He sentenced her to eight years’ jail with no minimum period of imprisonment, meaning she could apply for parole after one-third of the term.

A dossier on this woman shows she started a “tempestuous and chaotic relationship” with Hirini, who was a Black Power associate, when she was just 16.

She stuck with the bugger even though, at 18, she was gang raped by Black Power gang members and a year later was raped by one of Hirini’s gang friends.

She is now 33, which means she has stayed for 16 years or so in a violent relationship, self-medicating with booze, as her lawyer would have us believe, or getting pissed and becoming violent, as Alf would put it.

There was almost a grim inevitability about the outcome. One of them would murder the other.

The best that can be said of this tawdry case is that one gang associate has been bumped off and his girlfriend is being locked up for a while.

At least she can be given credit for ridding us of a ratbag.

But if getting rid of ratbags is to be rewarded with light sentences, most parliamentarians – for starters – have cause to tighten their security arrangements.