An Australian man has been sentenced to more than a decade in prison for the 1988 murder of an American gay mathematician whose death was mistaken for suicide for years.
Scott White, 51, was sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison by a New South Wales Supreme Court judge on Tuesday, according to court records obtained from Oxygen.com.
White, who once pleaded not guilty to decades of murder and faces a life sentence, overturned his plea during a surprise confession in court in January. White must now serve at least eight years and three months in prison before being eligible for parole, according to the case file.
Scott Johnson, then a 27-year-old doctoral student, studied at the Australian National University, where he moved to be with his partner. His body was found at the foot of a coastal cliff on the outskirts of Sydney – a place known as a meeting place for gay men – on December 8, 1988.
Johnson’s death was later declared suicide.
For years, his family fought for its reopening by local police, and at one point they offered nearly $ 650,000 in Australian currency for information that could shed light on the American’s murder.
It was not until 2017, amid a new investigation following a retrial, that the initial findings surrounding Johnson’s death were formally challenged. White was eventually arrested in 2020.
“The offender hit Dr. Johnson, causing him to stumble back and leave the edge of the cliff,” Judge Helen Wilson wrote in a court ruling Tuesday. “In those seconds when he must have realized what was happening to him, Dr. Johnson must have been horrified, aware that he was going to hit the rocks below and realizing his fate. It was a horrible death. “
Wilson said she had not found beyond a reasonable doubt that Johnson’s murder was a crime of gay hatred – a potential aggravating factor that could prolong White’s sentence.
The president also acknowledged a number of other mitigating factors that contributed to her sentencing White’s sentence, including the time lag between Johnson’s death and White’s arrest in 2020. White was only 18 at the time of Johnson’s death.
“It must be understood that the Court does not convict a violent and aggressive young man of deliberately attacking a gay man,” Wilson said. “Due to the passage of time, the offender is no longer the same angry young man who raised his fists at another on the edge of a cliff. The court also does not impose [a] conviction for a crime motivated by hatred of a certain sector of society; the evidence does not support this approach. “
In addition, the judge applied lighter models of sentences compatible with those in force at the time of Johnson’s death in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She also concluded that White, who showed signs of cognitive impairment, had “shown remorse” for his involvement in Johnson’s death more than three decades ago.
“He showed a certain level of emotion when discussing the events and told one of the officers that he would ‘never handle it,'” Wilson said in court documents. “It implies a level of suffering from what he did.”
White also told a forensic psychiatrist last June that he felt sorry for Johnson’s surviving brother, Steve Johnson, and expressed hope that a guilty verdict could “reassure the family,” according to court records.
Days before the January hearing was canceled, White told his lawyers that the pressure on the trial was too strong.
“I see my brother there, the police are pointing at me. It’s too much, “White told his lawyers on January 10, according to a transcript of their conversation contained in separate court documents. “I didn’t sleep, I didn’t have a shower, four hours in a cell. I just want to end this. “
White shocked the audience in the courtroom – including Johnson’s family – when he spoke in court days later and told the judge, “I’m guilty, I’m guilty, I’m guilty.”
The stunning confession was a welcome respite, especially for Johnson’s brother, Steve Johnson, who traveled to Sydney from the United States to attend the trial.
“No one was prepared for that, including me,” Steve Johnson said in January, according to the New York Times. “I’m grateful to Scott White for saving us the process, saving us months, saving us more uncertainty.”
In 2018, an Australian parliamentary review of 88 suspicious deaths from 1976 to 2000 found that 27 men were probably killed for their gay homosexuality.
White’s lawyers, Belinda Rigg and Bill Neild, were not immediately available for comment when they contacted Oxygen.com by phone and email Tuesday morning.
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