Judge Lizzie Curtain back flips
Feel free to read my comments at the end of this article…
Supreme Court judge lifts ban on identifying men who bashed Sudanese refugee Liep Gony to death
Elissa Hunt
From: Herald Sun
February 17, 2010 3:15PM
Clinton Rintoull and Dylan Sabatino bashed a Sudanese youth to death after Rintoull sprayed racist graffiti on a wall and was heard yelling that he was going to “kill blacks” just before the attack.
But a Supreme Court Justice found the murder was not racially motivated because Rintoull claimed he had been kind to a homeless Sudanese boy a week earlier.
The pair had their images kept secret amid fears of jail yard payback for their horrific crime.
But this morning Justice Elizabeth Curtain revoked her suppression orders, saying that there was nothing to justify them.
She said the people were entitled to form their own views on whether the killing was racial and it was not her role to stifle public debate.
Rintoull, 24, and Sabatino, 21, bashed Liep Gony, 19, to death after finding him extremely drunk and helpless in a Noble Park street in September 2007.
Sabatino pleaded guilty to manslaughter and got 10 years’ jail with a minimum of six. Rintoull pleaded to murder, which earned him 20 years with a minimum of 16.
Rintoull had been complaining that local Sudanese had “turning the town into the Bronx”.
But Justice Curtain said she was not satisfied the killing was race-related.
“I am not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt, despite the racist comments expressed by you and your infelicitous language that your offending was motivated either wholly or partly by hatred or prejudice against a group of people with common characteristics, but rather by frustration and anger directed to a group of persons irrespective of their race whom you regarded as violent, out of control and taking over the Noble Park Railway Station,” Justice Curtain said in sentencing the pair in December,.
“Your comments … bespeak anger, frustration and a sense of vigilantism and it cannot be denied that there is a racial aspect to your remarks directed to the group that had pursued you earlier in the week and as recorded in the one piece of graffiti which was expressed in the most derogatory and insulting terms.
“To say that this killing was racially motivated is to deny a complex set of factors.
“But your actions on the previous Sunday when you had twice taken food to the homeless African boy living in the abandoned house is not consistent with your actions on this night being racially motivated, and in these circumstances I am not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that your actions were so racially motivated and that racism per se was a motive for the attack.”
The pair trashed their rental home doing $16,000 worth of damage and Rintoull sprayed “f… da niggas” on a wall.
He was then heard yelling “I am going to take my town back, I’m looking to kill the blacks” while waving a metal pole.
After hearing Rintoull say, “I guess I’ll go and take my anger out on some niggers” his housemate sent Sabatino after him to make sure he was okay.
But the pair came across Mr Gony, with Rintoull hitting him at least 15 times and Sabatino about four times.
He was left bleeding on a nature strip, the pair not even having made a 000 call for an ambulance.
A passer-by later found him, but it was too late to save the young refugee who fled war-torn Sudan for a better life in Australia in 2001.
Mr Gony died from massive head injuries after his family made the painful decision to turn off his life support.
In releasing the controversial photos to the Herald Sun, Justice Curtain said it was up to the public to make up their own minds about the case.
“If release and publication of the photographs will lead to persons forming an opinion that the killing was racially motivated, so be it,” she said.
“People are entitled to their views even if formed on a basis different from the material placed before the sentencing judge.”
I have to say that Lizzie Curtain is from far the brightest light on our Supreme Court bench.
As we talked about in this case some weeks ago, Lizzie’s sentence disgusted the victim’s family who were sitting in her court room, as most of her sentences do.
Now I have to wonder about the new Lizzie’s about face…
Has she seen the light (no pun intended Liz) or is it something to do with the coming election? No more Gestapo courts.
One can only think that Lizzie has gone from batting for the other side and becoming a bowler for the victims.
Hmmm… 1 for the victims! Do you think its start of a new trend?? (NOT)
Sadly, it’s little wonder the judicial system appears so confusing and we – the general public, have such little faith in it. Rarely does the punishment appear to fit the crime. What value life?
Sonia, we have to have an Iderpendent Judicial Appointment and
Advisory Board made of a legal person as president retired Judge Philip Cummings would be a good start their. People from the community to server three years to appoint judges to the bench, consul them about poor justice judgment, and poor court decourem. Other than the president no legal people on the board.
Bronte it is a disgrace they honestly beleive the laws belong to them and not the community.