Mallard on Maori and manslaughter

The Herald on Sunday has alerted me to this blog post by Trevor Mallard. I have not been reading other blogs while on holiday so would have missed it. Anyway Trevor says:

I live in Wainuiomata. Like most smaller communities I know the extended Rawiri whanau, but not well.

These five people killed their niece. It happened over an extended period.

I accept that they almost certainly would not reoffend and prison may be an expensive waste of time. And there are too many Maori in prison.

But I am certain that a Pakeha exorcism that resulted in torture and death would result in a prison term – albeit not necessarily a long one.

The fact that they weren’t sent to prison because they are Maori just doesn’t seem right to me.

Almost every blog on the right has said they agree with Trevor. Interestingly I have not yet seen much reaction from left blogs.

I was actually thinking of blogging how surprised I was none of them got jailtime, and I basically agree with Trevor that it is hard to imagine an exorcism by say a church pastor with the same results would not have got a jail sentence.

In fact one of Trevor’s commenters reminds us that Pastor Luke Lee got six years jail for an exorcism manslaughter in 2001. While the cases are somewhat different it is hard to reconcile six years jail with zero years jail.

MacDoctor notes that even defence lawyer Barry Hart has said the sentences are too lenient. MacDoctor says the sentence is absurdly lenient and intensely paternalistic. I agree.