CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — An Australian man pleaded guilty Thursday to manslaughter in the death 35 years ago of an American man who fell from a Sydney cliff known as a gay hangout. The victim’s family welcomed the long-term turning point. campaign for justice.
Scott White’s appeal to the New South Wales Supreme Court comes three months after his conviction for the murder of Scott Johnson was overturned by an appeal court.
The Los Angeles-born Johnson’s family fought for years to overturn an initial finding that the 27-year-old mathematician took his own life in 1988.
Johnson’s older brother, Steve Johnson, of Boston, told reporters that Thursday’s proceedings “might be the most emotional moment ever.” I watched the Sydney court hearing online from the US.
The breakthrough evidence came last October when police intercepted a jailhouse phone call between White and a niece in which she confessed to hitting her victim on top of the cliff, Johnson said.
“In that call to her niece, she corroborated the evidence they (police) gathered earlier that brought her defense team to the table” to negotiate a guilty plea, Johnson told The Associated Press.
“The police work that went through appeal and after appeal to get the last piece of evidence that brought it to the table … so that we can negotiate this, I’m incredibly grateful,” he said.
Johnson said he read the facts of the crime agreed to between prosecutors and defense attorneys as part of a plea deal that will be presented to a judge when White returns to court June 6 for sentencing.
via the Associated Press
“Reading the black and white of his confession where he says he got the first punch, which I think was the only punch and my brother must have been very close to the rock … it kind of makes me angry,” Johnson said. .
A medical examiner ruled in 2017 that Scott Johnson “fell off the cliff as a result of an actual or threatened attack” by strangers who “attacked him because they perceived him to be gay.”
The coroner also found that gangs of men roamed various locations in Sydney looking for gay men to assault, resulting in the deaths of some victims. Some people were also robbed.
It was the third investigation into the tragedy, after pressure from the family. A coroner initially ruled in 1989 that the openly gay man took his own life, while a second coroner in 2012 could not explain how he died.
Steve Johnson described the police investigation into the third inquiry as “spectacular”. But he said his brother’s killing could easily have been solved by police when he died.
“Indeed, many of us believe that police indifference to these gay murders and beatings in the 1980s helped to provoke them. The perpetrators always knew they were not going to get in trouble,” Johnson said.
A New South Wales government inquiry began in November, hearing evidence of unsolved deaths in homophobic hate crimes over four decades in Australia’s most populous state, where police have been notoriously indifferent to such violence .
Anti-gay violence in Sydney was particularly rife from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s because of growing hostility and fear stemming from the AIDS epidemic, an HIV advocacy group, ACON, told the inquiry.
Steve Johnson, a wealthy entrepreneur, offered a $US1 million ($704,000) reward in 2020 for information about his brother’s death, matching a reward already offered by police.
via the Associated Press
White, 52, was arrested in Sydney that year and pleaded not guilty to murdering Johnson, who was a PhD student at the Australian National University. student who was living in the capital, Canberra, when he died.
Police hinted that the reward led to the arrest, saying they expected it to be withdrawn after White’s conviction.
White surprised his lawyers last January by pleading guilty to murder during a preliminary hearing.
About 20 minutes later, White signed a statement saying he was “confused” when he pleaded guilty, did not cause Johnson’s death and wanted to plead not guilty.
But the judge entered the guilty plea and White was sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison.
In sentencing White, the judge said he did not find beyond a reasonable doubt that the killing was a homophobic hate crime, which would have led to a longer prison sentence.
In November, three judges at the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal ruled that White should be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea, overturning the conviction and sentence.
White pleaded not guilty to murder and guilty to manslaughter on Thursday. Prosecutors previously agreed with White’s attorneys to accept the plea.
Deputy Chief Inspector Peter Yeomans told reporters outside the court that the conviction vindicated the Johnson family’s long fight for justice.
“Look, a very emotional day for everyone, especially the Johnson family, who have been through a very traumatic time for the last 34 years, and today really validates that family, which they’ve done for many, many years,” said Yeomans. .
The New South Wales Special Commission of Inquiry into LGBTIQ Hate Crime will report on June 30.
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