An Australian man was yesterday sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison for the 1988 murder of a US man who fell off a Sydney cliff that was known as a gay meeting place.
The death of mathematician Scott Johnson was initially called a suicide, but his family pressed for further investigation. A coroner in 2017 found a number of assaults, some fatal, where the victims had been targeted because they were thought to be gay.
Scott White, 51, pleaded guilty in January and could have been sentenced to up to life in prison.
Justice Helen Wilson said she did not find beyond reasonable doubt that the murder was a gay hate crime, which would have led to a longer sentence.
She also said she applied more lenient sentencing patterns in place in New South Wales state in the late 1980s.
He must serve eight years and three months in prison before he can be considered for parole.
White was 18 and homeless when he met 27-year-old Los Angeles-born Johnson at a bar in suburban Manly in December 1988 and went with him to a nearby cliff top at North Head.
White’s former wife Helen White told police in 2019 that her then-husband had bragged about beating gay men and had said the only good gay man was a dead gay man.
She told the court on Monday that her husband had told her Johnson had run off the cliff. Scott White told police that he was himself gay and frightened that his homophobic brother would find out.
Wilson said it was not possible to draw any conclusions beyond reasonable doubt about what had happened at the clifftop.
“The offender hit Dr Johnson, causing him to stumble backwards and leave the cliff edge,” 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 strike the rocks below and conscious of his fate,” Wilson said. “It was a terrible death.”
Scott White had a record of violent crime before and after the murder, but had not committed any offense since 2008.
“Because of the lapse of time, the offender is no longer the same angry young man who raised his fists to another on the edge of a cliff. Neither is the court imposing a sentence for a crime motivated by hatred for a particular sector of society. The evidence is too slender to support that,” Wilson said.
She said a sentence for the same crime today would be “much higher.”
Scott White’s lawyers have appealed his conviction.
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