It must be Life Without Parole

Stuff reports:

The man convicted of the Christchurch mosque attacks will represent himself when he is sentenced next month. …

Justice Mander said the shooter’s choice to represent himself will not affect the sentencing, which would proceed on August 24 as planned.

The court would appoint standby counsel for the sentencing hearing, whose role is to represent the accused should he later choose to be legally represented.

The accused will be sentenced on 51 charges of murder, 40 charges of attempted murder and a charge of committing a terrorist act after he entered shock guilty pleas to all charges in March.

The sentencing is scheduled to start on August 24 and is expected to take three days.

I’m puzzled by how the debate over sentencing will take three days.

The sentence for murder is an automatic life sentence under s172(1) of the Crimes Act, unless it is manifestly unjust. There can be no debate a life sentence would be manifestly unjust.

So the only thing to decide is what the minimum period of imprisonment without parole is. The normal minimum is 10 years, but s104(1) of the Sentencing Act says it must be at least 17 years if the murder was committed as part of a terrorist act or the offender has been convicted of 2 or more counts or murder.

So the real issue before the court is a choice of:

• A life sentence with a minimum period of imprisonment between 17 and x years
• A life sentence without parole

The longest minimum period of imprisonment was for William Bell for murdering three people and attempting to murder a fourth. He got 30 years. So there can be no debate really that x must be at least 30 years as 51 murders is far more than three murders.

But really, I think the only feasible sentence is life without parole. S103(2A) states that “If the court that sentences an offender convicted of murder to imprisonment for life is satisfied that no minimum term of imprisonment would be sufficient to satisfy 1 or more of the purposes stated in subsection (2), the court may order that the offender serve the sentence without parole.”

The purposes above are accountability, denunciation, deterrence and protection.

If gunning down 51 people in an act of terrorism and wounding 40 others doesn’t qualify for the maximum available sentence, then what act possibly could? Would you have to nuke an entire city to get life without parole?

Parliament in 2010 legislated for life without parole to be available for the worst murders. A court that failed to impose it for these 51 murders would be flagrantly ignoring Parliament’s will in making this sentence available.

I don’t want his victims to have to worry that in 30+ years time they will have to track his parole status and make representations to the Parole Board about whether he should be let out. If he gets life without parole, then they can at least not have to think about him again, knowing he will never be released.

UPDATE: The three days for the hearing will not be primarily for arguments over the non parole period. There will be potentially 90+ victim statements to be heard from families members and those wounded.