This Court of Appeal judgement quashed the life sentences of three teenage murderers and replaced them with finite sentences and shorter non-parole periods.

Life imprisonment with 10-year minimum before parole has long been the standard, least severe sentence for murder. It’s clear from media reports that most men who murder receive longer non-parole periods than 10 years while that’s rare for female murderers.

In this case, the Appeal Court decided it had been ‘manifestly unjust’ (as per the Sentencing Act 2002) to have sentenced these appellants to life imprisonment due in part to their neurological immaturity at their age, yet the Court claimed it had not created an exception to the presumption of life imprisonment for all youth murderers.

One of the murders involved both a female (16yo) and male (19yo) offender who appealed (and at least one other male who didn’t appeal), while the other murder was committed by one sole female offender (18yo). All the appellants had problematic childhoods, the male also being mildly intellectually disabled. The male received the largest reduction in sentence to 12 years finite with 6 years minimum. The 18yo female was resentenced to 13 years finite with 7 years minimum, while the 16yo female was resentenced to 15 years finite with 7.5 years minimum.

Despite the male appellant receiving the largest reduction in sentence, likely due to his intellectual limitations and extremely disrupted childhood, it seems more than coincidence that both of the successfully appealed murders involved female offenders. We doubt that the Court’s decision would have been the same if it had been only one or more males who appealed. For example, an appeal against life imprisonment with 12 years minimum by a 17yo male murderer with brain impairment due to Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, was previously thrown out by the Court of Appeal. Without a female co-offender seeking more sympathetic treatment, males appear to be wasting their time in seeking compassion.

We believe this judgement is mainly another case of the ‘female pass’ when it comes to justice. Sympathy and caring towards females much more so than males continues to characterize our laws, law-enforcement, Courts and Corrections systems. Given that both of the murders involved female appellants whom the Appeal Court saw as lacking full adult culpability, that Court would show duplicity if it had not also shown the same consideration towards the male applicant. The Court’s attempt to prevent its judgement from being a general precedent meant that other teenage male murderers cannot expect to receive the same compassion on appeal, while the normal compassion towards females will be facilitated.

The reference to ‘neurological immaturity’ due to age was interesting. Boys develop cognitively more slowly than females, especially in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain known as the ‘executive brain’ largely responsible for human abilities such as insight, reasoning, foresight regarding consequences and containment of emotional and instinctual responses. If neurological immaturity is to be taken into account in sentencing, we can expect males up to their late 20s (when their pre-frontal cortical development catches up to females) will routinely receive less severe sentences than females for similar crimes. Yeah right, check out your window to see if any pigs are flying by.

The Ministry of Men’s Affairs (a community group) is not necessarily objecting to the Appeal Court’s compassion towards offenders in this case, nor is it offering any opinion about how murderers or other offenders should be dealt with beyond gender equality.