The travesty ends

I last wrote about this case a week ago, in another context, but it still stirs up feelings of contempt in me for an aspect of New Zealand’s current legal system.

Today Ferdinand Ambach was sentenced to twelve years in prison, with a minimum of eight years without parole, for murdering Ronald Brown. This is a travesty.

The murderer Ambach beat his victim with a banjo before it broke and he then rammed the banjo's neck down his victim’s throat. The murderer then trashed his victim’s home, including treasured items and things that had come from his parents.

I keep calling Ambach a murderer because that’s what he is, no matter what New Zealand’s legal system says: Under current law, he’s technically not a murderer because he committed “manslaughter”. Ambach claimed the victim allegedly made “sexual advances” (which, quite frankly, I’m beginning to think was a lie). It’s the good old fashioned “gay panic” defence.

Ambach slandered his victim in an attempt to get off his murder charge and it worked, as it pretty much always does when the victim is gay. Only a few days ago, a certain high-profile heterosexual murder case was decided. In it, the absurd partial defence of provocation failed, and the murderer received life in prison with no chance of parole for 18 years. What’s the difference between the two cases? In the latter case a heterosexual man murdered a pretty white woman. Can anyone seriously believe that’s not why there was a discrepancy in the sentence?

Ambach is murderer, plain and simple. What he did to his victim is no more defensible than what the heterosexual killer did, but the sentence is dramatically different. The government is currently working on repealing the defence of partial provocation and it must do so with all deliberate speed. GLBT New Zealanders have been victimised enough by this reprehensible law.

Personally, I couldn’t possibly care less what happens to Ambach, who has shown no signs of remorse. According the NZ Herald, “Justice Helen Winkelmann said the show of remorse had come late and was likely to be ‘self-serving’.” The murderer’s lawyer, Peter Kaye, said Ambach had no previous convictions, as if that mattered. He added that unlike New Zealand prisoners, Ambach will not have visits from family members because he has none in the country. Boo-fucking-hoo.

Predictably, Kaye said "I think provocation should remain. I there are some compelling situations that just cry out for the defence of provocation. It's already very carefully policed by judges and there's no doubt in my mind it should remain." What planet is that man on? There is no “careful policing” unless the murder victim is heterosexual.

With a bit of luck and determination from Parliament, this indefensible defence will soon be gone. I certainly will not be letting this go.