Charles Chauvel Charles Chauvel says the five year jail sentence for a teenager who killed a gay Papakura man shows a double standard, and the law needs to change. Willie Ahsee, 17, has been given the jail term for the manslaughter of non-sworn police officer Denis Philips, who he stabbed four times in his Papakura home last July. When the judge created a sentencing starting point, he used the context of the amount of alcohol Ahsee had drunk with Phillips on the night of the killing and the sexual advances the 59-year-old victim made towards him before he was killed. Gay Labour MP Charles Chauvel, a former lawyer, says the legal double standard inherent in this sentence becomes obvious, if you imagine that the identity of the offender was female. "Would she get a low sentence starting point calculation because she reacted with extreme violence to what is said were unwanted sexual advances from the victim of the crime here? I think not," he says. "There would be outrage. It would be said that we had legitimised killing as a defence to unlawful sexual connection. The usual suspects would be up in arms," Chauvel continues. "I predict that all the usual suspects - the sensible sentencing trust; the ACT Party; Judith Collins (our new Minister of Justice) - who'd normally be outraged at a killer getting an effective sentence of three years (taking into account parole) for a brutal killing - won't speak up about this case because they'll all feel that it's somehow the right result." Chauvel says it's not the right result and the law needs to change. "The implicit homophobia here is that instead of just walking away from an allegedly unwelcome advance, our law continues to say that a man has some justification in lashing out - even killing - since such an advance is somehow understandably so loathsome that such a reaction is entirely understandable," he says. "Let's hope that's not the lesson that Mr Ahsee takes from his sentencing when he walks free from jail in three years' time."
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Saturday, 17th December 2011 - 8:32am