MORE JAIL FOR MALES

My comments yesterday about Margaret Uttley who killed her husband and got a minimum sentence of two years jail prompted understandable discussion on justice in Australia. Are there two forms? One for men and a softer one for women? Are women treated more leniently by our judges?

One caller on 3AW yesterday told of his father who killed his wife and kept that secret for 23 years. He was finally convicted and jailed for 23 years. One for every year he had been silent about his crime.

As I said yesterday Uttley's husband Stephen was not only killed –his reputation was murdered too. She painted him as a violent alcoholic who threatened her with a gun in the middle of the night and she shot him in the face. Didn't call an ambulance. Didn't call Police. She was eventually charged with murder and pleaded guilty to manslaughter but that only came after she burned her husband's body on a farm rubbish tip, told their kids and friends he had run away to the Northern Territory, and kept the grisly secret for seven years.

Should she have got one year for every year of cruel deception?

Then there was the case of Patrick Plumbe. His wife of two days Margaret Vandergulik got him to change his million dollar will and the next day bashed him unconscious and then, with her son Michael, faked a car accident and Plumbe was burned alive.

On trial for murder she plea-bargained down to a guilty manslaughter plea and  got a minimum of six years jail.

Last night I received an e-mail from another killer's mother. It's a bit like the Uttley case in reverse.  Paul Margach suspected his wife of being unfaithful. He says she boasted sex with the other man was the best she'd ever had. She told him she was leaving with their two children.  He claims she came at him with a kitchen knife. He stabbed her to death. A grisly crime.

But, unlike Margaret Uttley he called an ambulance. When Police arrived he admitted what he had done. Like Uttley he wanted to plead guilty to manslaughter but after two trials was jailed for murder and sentenced to 17 years with a non-parole periods of 13-1/2.

As his mother Ivy said: ‘He reported it!   He did not run away!    He did not bury her!   He was emotionally devastated at what he had done and to this day is a mental wreck'.  

Three cases. Two females. One male. Was he treated more harshly because of his gender? I wonder.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009