LIBERTARIAN SUS: A Tale of Two Sentences

Susan Ryder does something the media forgot to do: comparing the sentences handed down to two high-profile criminals.

The local news was full of reports last Friday on the sentencing of two New Zealand men for the respective deaths of two New Zealand children.

Both were high-profile cases on which much has been written and said.  Both occurred in the North Island. Both caused shock and outrage within the population at large. And both men have received almost identical sentences.

The first case concerns 51 year-old Bruce Emery, found guilty of the manslaughter of Pihema Cameron, aged 15. Thirteen months ago, Cameron and a friend decided to deface Emery’s garage in Manurewa. Armed with a knife, Emery attempted to disrupt their activities and in the ensuing fracas, Cameron was killed.

The second case concerns 49 year-old William Curtis, found guilty for his role in the death of Nia Glassie in Rotorua, aged 3. Little more than a baby when she died, Nia had the fatal misfortune to be born into the wrong family, six of whom are now in prison for her death.

So there we have the essence of each case. Let’s now look at them a little more closely.

Bruce Emery personifies the Kiwi who’s just had enough.

1. Had enough of tolerating teens who don’t give a damn for anyone else or anyone else’s property.
2. Had enough of paying for people who think they have the right to live off others for nothing in return.
3. Had enough of the endless excuses trotted out by apologists for the actions of those same people.
4. Had enough of police who never come when you call them and seldom treat this sort of property crime seriously when they do.
5. Had enough of politicians who bleat about how they are going to “get tough” on crime prior to every election – and then do sweet bugger all afterward.

So a family man, a complete stranger to law-breaking, spots a couple of teenage vandals, grabs a knife in self-defence (so he said) and, at the end of his tether, his actions result in the fatal stabbing of one of the perpetrators.

Convicted last December, he, via his lawyer, reportedly asked the Cameron family for forgiveness. Based on the very public reaction by the Camerons to his sentencing last Friday, he will be waiting some time. Described by Herald columnist Tapu Misa as “bitter and intemperate”, the family, all sporting t-shirts bearing the deceased’s image, were visibly angry and disgusted with the sentence of four years and three months.

That the Cameron family has lost a loved member cannot be denied. That a teenager has lost his life as a result of tagging somebody’s garage is undeniably harsh. But nowhere have the Camerons acknowledged that Pihema died as a result of committing a crime, as a result of his actions. Had he been at home, or anywhere else that evening, supervised and minding his own business, he might still be alive. Had he been by Bruce Emery’s garage and not defaced it, he would not have died in the manner he did. Wailing about his loss while wearing t-shirts bearing his picture is all very well and good for ratings-mindful media and head-shaking do-gooders, but sadly, it’s a bit like shutting the door after the horse has bolted.

On to the second case where six people have been convicted and sentenced for the death of Nia Glassie, William Curtis being the sixth. Let’s re-cap what he did to his tiny de facto step-granddaughter:

1. Tied a scarf around her neck and lifted her by it until she went purple in the face.
2. Slapped her with such force that her face would bleed.
3. Shouted and swore at her to shut up or he would stomp on her head.

The terror to which that child was subjected is beyond comprehension. She lived with that monster – that subhuman – for four months. And he was one of six – six – adults responsible for the terror, two of whom (his sons) are serving sentences for her murder. It has been noted that Curtis remains unremorseful for his actions.

Unlike Pihema Cameron, Nia’s mother was not outside court last Friday morning wailing and wearing a t-shirt bearing her daughter’s image. Lisa Kuka is already in prison, being found guilty on two charges of the manslaughter of her own daughter. Unlike Pihema Cameron, wee Nia Glassie never had a chance.

Tapu Misa has the temerity to say that Pihema Cameron was killed “over a bit of paint.”  Fellow columnist Brian Rudman – another stranger to the concept of personal responsibility – calls the overwhelming pro-Emery public reaction “lacking in common decency and civility.” And Maori party co-leader Tariana Turia describes taggers as a “misunderstood sub-culture of artists.” The race card has turned up with yawning predictability, as have comparisons with the longer sentence handed down to (then 12 year old) Bailey Junior Kurariki for his part in the murder of Michael Choy seven years ago, whilst ignoring the premeditated nature of the latter crime. Welcome to glaring examples of point three, as above.

And so to last Friday’s sentencing. Bruce Emery received four years and three months for the manslaughter of Pihema Cameron. William Curtis received four years for his role in the death of Nia Glassie.

Perhaps those expressing shock and outrage over “unjust” or “pathetic” sentencing might like to ponder that.

* * Read Libertarian Sus every Tuesday here at NOT PC * *

NOT in support of murder

I must confess I'm disturbed by the many messages of support and sympathy I've seen around the place for the fifty-year old murderer of Pihema Cameron, a man who knifed the fifteen-year old for the offence of tagging his Manurewa fence. This wasn't self-defence, for which he'd have my support. He didn't drag the young tagger from his fence and discipline him, for which he might have my sympathy. He didn't just chastise him, which he certainly deserved. Instead he chased him three-hundred metres down the road and stabbed him through the heart. That's not self-defence -- the only legal defence available to him. That looks more like murder.

For tagging his fence, he murdered him.

I just don't understand how people can support murder.

Now I don't know the murdered youngster from a hole in the ground -- which is where he is now -- but when I was Pihema's age I must confess to having tagged a building or two around South Auckland. I'm not proud of it. It wasn't smart. But I grew up. Pihema Cameron never will.

I just don't understand how people can his support murder.

It's murder

More New Zealanders murdered by New Zealanders.  Ten people murdered already, with the year only twenty-nine days old.

Tahani Mahomed
Michael Hutchings
Bronwyn Whakaneke
Sophie Elliot
Karen Aim
An unidentified woman aged between 30 and 50, found dead in the Wairoa River
Chattrice Maihi-Carroll-Poipoi
Saishwar Krishna Naidu
Shayne Walker
Pihema Cameron

“The motivation behind them seem to be quite random,” Detective Superintendent Win Van Der Velde said, “so there’s no single trend or factor.”

Random violence.  No single trend or factor.  Just a brutal start to a new year.  Here in New Zealand we like to think we're immune from the violence that all too frequently sweeps the world, but our 'quarter-acre pavlova paradise' sometimes seems more like Hell's half-acre.

With a new outrage almost every day, picking up the newspaper each morning is becoming an act of courage.

It is impossible not to contemplate the questions the slaughter raises: What kind of world - what kind of a country - is it in which these things can be done to other human beings: a child's life snuffed out by his parents; a graduate with her life before her murdered by ex-boyfriend; a bubbly young girl seeing the world is slaughtered by a young boy; another young boy killed for tagging a fence in Manurewa; and another young Manurewa boy killed in his parent's dairy ...

“We pay tax and what do we get?” says dairy owner Anand. “We’re trying to work hard. We try to make an honest living.”  Not so the brutes, who end the lives of other human beings for nothing much more than the 'kicks' it gives them.

What kind of bloody place is this where such unthinking, mindless brutes exist that can do such things to other people? What use is it -- we might ask ourselves -- to proselytise, to persuade and to philosophise when the newspaper is full of new atrocities every time we pick it up? What use is philosophy and reason when brainless brutality seems the order of the day?

Bertrand Russell once observed that "many people would sooner die rather than think - in fact, they do so." If only, we lament, it were only the wilfully mindless who were dying!  But it's not - these bastards are taking others with them before they go.

'What refuge is there from this noxious tide of irrational brutality?' I wondered as I drove into town this morning helping a client set up a new business. As I drove I watched thousands of other good people going purposefully about their business - carrying out their plans, making deals, and enjoying the adventure of life in a teeming city. And as I drove, I realised that - despite the headlines - these senseless killings are still the exception rather than the rule. The slayings are still news precisely because they are not normal everyday events: The norm was here, I realised, right outside my car window, inside my client's new architecturally-designed offices, and in the heaving, pulsating, guffawing city all around me.

I realised the overwhelming majority of people, in this hemisphere at least, are simply going about their daily business - planning, acting and producing wealth and happiness for themselves and for others. The mindless brutes are not all around us; what we see around us instead are people much like ourselves - people whose actions are the exact inverse of the mindless morons - people whose actions are purposefully productive. It is such actions that move the world, not the actions of a few mindless thugs, however brutal.

Those of us who do value reason and happiness will often become frustrated by the mindlessness around us - particularly when violent mindlessness is inundating the news we see. But the fact remains that, in the western world at least, the violently mindless are still very much in the minority.

The meek will probably never get the chance to inherit the earth, and nor perhaps will the brutes: We will - those of us who do choose to think, and to act, and to guffaw. But some days it still seems like we'll have to fight the brutes for it all the way.

Pass the ammunition.

UPDATE: January's outbreak of brutality is the "backfire of collectivism" says Callum McPetrie.  It's hard to disagree.