MAGISTERIAL MADNESS

I ran out of things to say on 3AW yesterday. Was almost lost for words after talking to two mothers whose children died violently. I mean, what can you say? Sandra Betts, whose daughter Raechel disappeared last month. Her severed leg washed up on a Phillip Island beach five days later. And Dianne Linskens. Her 18-year-old son Aaron, was kicked to death by a young thug in the car park of the Village Green hotel in Glen Waverly in 2002.

You hope they catch Raechel’s killer soon but you are entitled to wonder what sort of sentence he will get. Especially in this world of legal madness. Especially after what happened yesterday to the killer of Aaron Linskens. Especially if a jurist with the mindset of Magistrate Duncan Reynolds were on the Bench.

Ryan Leigh Johns, whose second name should be thug, killed Linskens, a total stranger, with a karate kick to the head. He was jailed for six years but released after three and a half.

In January this year at Casey’s nightclub he attacked again. He attacked Andrew Colbeck on the dance floor and, with a young accomplice, kicked him unconscious. Any rational person would think that Johns, having kicked one man to death, and guilty of a similar brutal crime only a couple of years after being released from prison, would have been jailed big time. Not in Melbourne.

Magistrate Reynolds jailed him for only eight months. He’ll be out soon and he’ll kill somebody else. Mark my words.

I’ve discovered a lot about this psychopath. Some if it from people understandably too scared to be identified. They fear retribution when Johns is released again. Which won’t be long. Remember he told a friend of his last victim to warn Andrew Colbeck that ‘if he went to the jacks (the Police) he’d get fucked up’.

Before Johns killed Aaron Linskens he already had convictions –in July 2001 after kicking another man in the head and in October 2001 be broke a man’s nose.

Head-kicking is this thug’s lethal hobby. He was involved in martial arts clubs in the Knox and Ferntree Gully areas but was kicked out for being too violent. When Police searched his house they found a martial arts dummy. The only part of it that was worn was the side of the heads from where he’d been practising his round house kick. The one that killed Aaron Linskens.

In prison he hung out with a Lebanese group who called themselves the Taliban.

Johns only got eight months because Magistrate Reynolds said he did not want to impose a crushing sentence that would affect his efforts at rehabilitation. Forget the skulls he’s crushed in the past and the heads he’ll crush in the future.

And speaking of rehab. Since his last release from jail he has boasted to anyone who’ll listen that he killed a man with a kick to the head. His lawyer, Paul Galbally, told the court that Johns had tried to involve himself with his family and a sporting club.

I guess that’s the same club where earlier this year he kicked an opposition player behind play and in the brawl that followed used his fists and boots again.

Believe me, this maniac will kill again. And why wasn’t he sent back to jail to serve the extra two and a half years of his original sentence for manslaughter? The DPP must appeal against yet another sentencing scandal.

PS. The Chief Magistrate Ian Gray has an article in the Herald Sun today.

He says, among other things: ‘Punishment is an important sentencing consideration. Magistrates are conscious of the legitimate public expectation that custodial sentences will be imposed for the most serious crimes, including the most serious assaults.

Mr.Gray. Your magistrates are NOT conscious of public expectations. Sometimes these days I wonder if they are conscious at all.

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009