Neil Mitchell makes an important point about Richard Pusey’s jail sentence
Neil Mitchell says there’s been some confusion about Richard Pusey’s jail sentence.
The Porsche driver, who police pulled over on the side of the Eastern Freeway before they were tragically hit and killed by truck-driver Mohinder Singh, was sentenced to 10 months jail on Wednesday.
Pusey received an eight month jail sentence for driving at 300km/h months before the April 2020 tragedy where four police were killed.
He received a three month jail sentence for outraging public decency, with one month served concurrently, for filming the police as they lay dead and dying on the side of the road.
“The papers, some of them, say he got 10 months jail for his role that day when the four died,” Neil Mitchell said.
“He didn’t — He got two months. Eight months of his sentence is for driving at 300km/h down the freeway months earlier.
“Don’t be misled.”
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Criminal barrister Nick Papas says sentencing Pusey for his involvement in the Eastern Freeway tragedy was would have been a “difficult” job.
“It’s (outraging public decency) a very unusual charge. It’s never been used, as far as I know, in my time as a barrister,” he told Neil Mitchell.
“The judge could have imposed any penalty.”
Mr Papas says he thinks some of the public outrage towards Pusey is misdirected.
“There’s all sorts of things you can describe him as, but people were killed by a drug affected driver. He’s the one who’s the serious criminal in this matter,” he said.
“All of the other things must be secondary to the fact that these poor people … doing their jobs, were killed by a drug-affected driver.
“In the end, he didn’t cause the deaths, he didn’t do anything beyond driving at an extreme speed which led to the police having to stop him.”
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