A police officer in Australia who Tasered a 95-year-old nursing home resident has been found guilty of manslaughter.
Clare Nowland, a great-grandmother who had dementia and used a walker, was refusing to put down the steak knife she was holding when Sen Const Kristian James Samuel White discharged his Taser at her in May 2023.
A jury found White guilty in the New South Wales Supreme Court in Sydney after 20 hours of deliberation.
Nowland, a resident of Yallambee Lodge, a nursing home in the town of Cooma , fell backwards after White shocked her. She hit her head and died a week later in hospital.
The case prompted a high-level internal investigation by state police in New South Wales. It also provoked debate about how officers in the state use Tasers, a device that incapacitates using electricity.
Police said at the time of her death that Nowland received her fatal injuries from striking her head on the floor, rather than directly from the device's debilitating electric shock.
In video footage played during the Supreme Court trial, 34-year-old White was heard saying “nah, bugger it” before discharging his weapon, after the officers told Nowland 21 times to put the knife down. White told the jury he had been taught that any person wielding a knife was dangerous, The Guardian reported.
But after an eight-day trial, the jury rejected arguments by White's lawyers that his use of the Taser was a proportionate response to the threat posed by Nowland, who weighed about 100 pounds.
The prosecutor argued that White's use of the Taser was ‘utterly unnecessary and obviously excessive’, local news outlets said.
The charge of manslaughter carries a possible prison term of up to 25 years in jail in New South Wales. White is on bail.
Nowland was survived by eight children, 24 grandchildren, and 31 great-grandchildren, Australia's ABC reported.
