Involved Parties and Access to Justice
The case focuses on the judicial procedures regarding the sentencing of a perpetrator in Australia. Although a separate nation, it is also a member state of the Commonwealth of Nations. Australia’s head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who represents the accuser in this case. The defendant is Kristie Anne Abrahams, who was reported of committed the murder of her six-year-old daughter (Kristi Anne Abrahams, n.d.). Most of the court’s attention is given to the accusations of manslaughter, murder, interfering with the corpse, and multiple instances of physical abuse.
In total, there are three individuals, which are involved in this case – the murderer Kristie Anne Abrahams, her partner and accomplice, Robert Smith, and her murdered daughter, Kiesha Weippeart. Among other involved parties are the police, who engaged in an undercover investigation. The case received substantial attention from the public and caused the children and their parents at Kiesha’s kindergarten to feel anxiety. It can also be argued that many people started to regard the way upbringing is regulated with suspicion.
The nature of the crime has complicated the victims’ access to the legal system. First, everything that happened in the house was a private family affair, which means that very limited information was available on the real state of Kiesha’s living conditions. Second, Abrahams denied any access to the house to public servants who wanted to check Kiesha. Third, Smith and Abrahams have undertaken multiple steps in concealing the crime. Finally, the state of Kiesha’s remains made it impossible to ascertain the nature of her death.
Case Summary
All described events were transcribed over the course of three years. On July 18, 2010, Abrahams murdered her daughter in an unidentified manner. The next day, Abrahams and Smith stuffed Kiesha’s body in a suitcase, where it remained for five days. Afterward, they burned and buried her body in near bushland. Abrahams and Smith proceeded to conceal their actions by claiming that Kiesha was missing. The police immediately began an investigation, which treated Abrahams and Smith as suspects.
In the following weeks, it was undisclosed that Kiesha had been subjected to physical abuse. Six months later, the police declared her dead and ceased all search efforts. In April, an undercover officer received a confession of what had really transpired. The remnants of Kiesha were found and sent to the autopsy. On April 22, Abrahams and Smith were charged with murder and denied bail.
Case Resolution
The case was resolved three years later, on July 18, 2013. The defendant pleaded guilty in response to all convictions. Aside from Smith and Abrahams, there were witnesses to the murder. Initially, they pleaded guilty to manslaughter, but the trial continued. It was ascertained that Kiesha had received numerous injuries, which had been inflicted by her mother by Kiesha’s own admissions. Abrahams was forced to take an 18-month anger management course, during which she was apart from her daughter. She claimed to feel frustration at her daughter to the point of wanting to hurt her, which expanded the list of aggravating features.
There are also some mitigating factors, which pertain to Abrahams’ wrongdoings. First, she had a troubled childhood with an abusive father. At the age of ten, she found her mother dead. Abrahams lived in foster care with a sense of loathing for her father. When the subject of her childhood was brought up in the courtroom, Abrahams became emotional, which was uncharacteristic of her. Secondly, the judge noted Abrahams’ intellectual disability and anger outburst at the time of the murder. Finally, Abrahams showed remorse, pleaded guilty to murder, and was acknowledged to have been publicly vilified.
The standard punishment for the murder of a child is twenty-five years of imprisonment. However, the case with such complexity required the judge to reconsider the sentence. First, there was no indication of how Kiesha had been killed. Second, the considerable public backlash at Abrahams created confusion and obfuscated objective reasoning. Third, the judge took notice of the defendant’s remorse and stated that it was unlikely that she would ever re-offend. The final verdict was the non-parole period of sixteen years imprisonment.
Law Reform Implications
The first problem evident from this case is the lack of control over parents. The prosecution officer himself acknowledged that this crime was a logical consequence of the way the upbringing functions. Even though there had been numerous indications of problems within the family, no actions were taken to assess the quality of parenthood. This symbolizes the poor manner of controlling parents in the legal system. The subsequent law reform could necessitate obligatory evaluations of individuals who are suspected of mistreating their children.
The second issue with this case is public participation, which obfuscates the delivery of justice. Not only was the judge forced to reevaluate his own judgment, but the crowd also ignored the claims of problematic childhood and the defendant’s remorse. The resulting vilification obscures the larger systematic problem, which allowed the existence of this cycle of abuse in the first place. Therefore, it should be evident that the legal system functions insufficiently in relation to public participation. The logical law reform is tightening the rules regarding the audiences’ conduct during trials.
Reference
Kristi Anne Abrahams. (n.d.). Web.