Wilson said it was not possible to draw any conclusions beyond reason doubt about what had happened at the clifftop. Scott White told police that he was himself gay and frightened that his homophobic brother would find out. She told the court on Monday that her husband had told her Johnson had run off the cliff. She also said she applied more lenient sentencing patterns in place in New South Wales state in the late 1980s. Justice Helen Wilson said she did not find beyond reasonable doubt that the murder was a gay hate crime, an aggravating factor that would have led to a longer sentence.
Scott White, 51, pleaded guilty in January and could have been sentenced to up to life in prison. A coroner in 2017 found a number of assaults, some fatal, where the victims had been targeted because they were thought to be gay. The death of mathematician Scott Johnson was initially called a suicide, but his family pressed for further investigation. Steve Johnson with his sisters, Terry, left, and Rebecca and his wife Rosemarie, second right, arrive at the Supreme Court in Sydney on Monday for a sentencing hearing in the murder of Scott Johnson - Steve, Terry and Rebecca's brother.ĬANBERRA, Australia - An Australian man was sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison Tuesday for the 1988 murder of an American who fell off a Sydney cliff that was known as a gay meeting place.
