Jay Hanna: Court rulings don’t always fit the crime
![When the legal system gets it wrong.](https://images.thewest.com.au/publication/C-15472563/7f1d5af68de1e7fbbf3c097ee53f8d21188c7e4e-16x9-x0y113w1280h720.jpg?imwidth=810&impolicy=wan_v3)
I was grateful my colleagues were working from home on Monday because they didn’t have to listen to me hurling abuse at my computer screen while reading The West online.
Although it is unlikely they would have understood a word I said because when I’m angry, my decades-buried Scottish accent comes to the fore and I sound like I’m speaking in tongues.
The swearing kicked off when I read reporter Tegan Guthrie’s story on 29-year-old Jarrod Scott Smith who managed to avoid jail despite hitting his partner of eight years in the head with a PlayStation console before pulling her to the ground and punching her in the face in front of their children.
After being released on protective bail conditions Smith again assaulted his partner grabbing her neck and kicking her in the calf.
My blood was still boiling when I later read Emily Moulton’s story about 63-year-old veteran nurse Wendy Sym who collapsed in court after being sentenced to nine years in jail for the attempted murder of her partner of almost four decades.
Sym, who worked as a children’s nurse for decades, had been the sole carer for her dementia-plagued husband for almost 10 years.
The court was told she was suffering from “carer’s fatigue” and at the “end of her tether” when she injected her husband with insulin after he was admitted to hospital.
I realise Smith and Sym were up on very different charges but looking at it from a victim’s perspective I wonder who I’d be most likely to forgive, my exhausted spouse of decades watching my mental decline and struggling to cope? Or an angry partner who viciously assaulted me in front of our children with a gaming console?
I’m no judge but I know who I feel deserved more leniency.
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