Bruce Emery gets 4 years, 3 months

I am disheartened at the sentence that Bruce Emery has received for the killing of Pihema Cameron.

Back to the facts of this case as I wrote about December 12th after Emery had been found guilty of manslaughter

Pihema Cameron and a friend were tagging Bruce Emery's fence late one night. Mr. Emery heard or saw what was going on and called out, he then went inside his house spoke to his wife, went down the internal stairs and left the property with a knife. He then took off after Pihema Cameron and his friend and at around 300 meters from Mr. Emery's house there was an altercation.

At the end of this altercations, Pihema had been stabbed, and subsequently died of the injury.

I am not annoyed because of this particular case, but it's another example of the justice system failing the victims and the citizens of this country. 4 years and 3 months is not enough for taking a life, but it seems as that is the approximate sentence for manslaughter in NZ.

Ngatai Reweti - 4 years
Maine Ngati and Teusila Fa'asisila - Non-parole period of 4 years
Morgan Parker, Ashley Moffat, Nicholas Peters - 4 years 6 months

The are some sentences that are longer like 8 or 9 years, and I have found some as short as 18 months, but the 4 years mark seems to be about average.

In my opinion, the lenient sentences in this country are not working and more importantly they are doing nothing to honour the victim and the victim's family.

There is another anomaly. There is a call from many that Bruce Emery should not have received a sentence at all, that his actually did NZ a favour, that he was defending his own property. These are normally the same sort of people who think we should be tougher on offenders, the kinds of people that would like NZ to follow the USA, Thailand or Singapore win what they do with offenders.

If Bruce Emery had run after someone who had committed a minor property crime, and that person ended up dead at the hand of the chaser, I am comfortable in saying he would have been treated much harsher in those countries. I found an example of someone, in the USA, who drove her mother to buy some marijuana, she wasn't a user, she had no prior convictions and she got 12 1/2 years in the states. I found several examples of people in Singapore and Thailand where people where convicted of manslaughter, who didn't have any prior convictions and they all received more like 10 years and a canning.

The silence is also defending from Garth McVicar of the Sensible Sentencing Trust, I wonder if he learnt his lesson when he came out to support the offender in this case in December and ignored the victims. I felt he lost a lot of support from my talkback around that time, maybe he'll play less of a hypocritical stroke in the sentencing.

I also find it interesting that Sensible Sentencing Trust has no file on Bruce Emery as an offender in their website but, for example, Ngatai Rewiti is there...both manslaughter, it would appear neither had any prior convictions...why is this? What is SST's agenda?