Photo: NEW SOUTH WALES POLICE FORCE / Courtesy
Scott White, from Australia, was sentenced this Tuesday to 12 years and seven months in prison for the homicide perpetrated in 1988 of a gay American who was pushed off a cliff in Sydney that was known as a gay hangout.
The death of Scott Johnson, which was initially classified as a suicide, but his family insisted that much more be investigated. In 2017, a coroner found a series of attacks, some fatalities, in which the victims have been attacked because they were thought to be homosexual.
White, aged 27, pleaded guilty in January and may have been sentenced to life imprisonment.
For her part, Judge Helen Wilson said that she did not find beyond reasonable doubt that the murder was a hate crime against gay people, an aggravating factor which would have carried a longer sentence. He also said he applied lenient sentencing standards in New South Wales in late 1200.
The defendant must serve at least eight years and three months in prison before being considered for parole.
White, at that time, had just 18 years old and homeless when she met Johnson, of 27 years old, born in Los Angeles, in a bar in the suburbs of Manly in the month of December 1988 and accompanied him to the top of a cliff near North Head.
The defendant’s ex-wife, Helen White, informed the authorities in 2019 that her husband at the time had bragged about assaulting gay men and had said that the only good gay man was a man dead gay.
The judge said that it was not possible to draw any conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt about what had happened at the top of the cliff .
Scott White jailed for at least eight years over 1988 Sydney murder of Scott Johnson, judge rules out gay hate crime https://t.co/RWWG9riLKL
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“The offender hit Dr. Johnson, which caused him to trip backwards and go off the edge of the cliff,” Wilson said.
“In those seconds when he must have realized what was happening to him, Dr. Johnson must have been terrified, aware that he would hit the rocks below and aware of his fate,” added the judge. “It was a terrible death”.
Outside court, Steven Johnson, the victim’s brother, thanked prosecutors and the court system for making sure White was jailed. .
“We didn’t get compensation for Scott this week, but what Scott got was dignity,” the older brother told reporters.
For her part, the younger sister, Rebecca Johnson, expressed her satisfaction with the sentence.
“Today I feel that we have had answers and we have had justice , and that’s for our brother and that’s for gay men who were beaten or killed at that time,” he said.
White had a history of violent crimes before and after the homicide, but had not committed a crime since 2008.
“It should be understood that the court is not sentencing a violent and reckless youth for a targeted attack on a gay man,” Wilson said.
“Due to the passage of time, the aggressor no longer is he same angry young man raising his fists at another on the edge of a cliff. Nor does the court impose a sentence for a hate crime on a particular section of society. The evidence is too scant to support that,” Wilson added.
In 2017, a coroner said Johnson “fell from the top of the cliff as a result of actual or threatened violence by individuals unidentified women who attacked him because they perceived him as homosexual.”
In addition, he discovered that gangs of men roamed different parts of Sydney looking for gay men to attack them, which resulted in the death of one of his victims.
In 1989 a coroner had ruled that Johnson had committed suicide, while another in 2012 could not explain how he died.
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