Scott Johnson: Man who pleaded guilty to murder of gay student 34 years ago has conviction quashed
Scott Johnson died in 1988. (Steve Johnson/BBC)
The man jailed for the murder of Scott Johnson after a 34-year wait for justice has had his conviction overturned.
Scott White, 51, was sentenced to 12 years in jail in May after pleading guilty to the 1988 murder of gay American mathematician Johnson, then 27, in Sydney, Australia.
After the body of maths student Johnson was found in Sydney three decades ago, his death was initially ruled a suicide.
However, after his family’s tireless campaigning, a 2018 coroner’s inquest ruled that he had likely died as the result of a homophobic hate crime.
Over 30 years later, in 2020, White was arrested at his home and charged with murder, later pleading guilty to pushing Johnson off of the North Head cliffs in Sydney.
The New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal, however, overturned White’s conviction on Friday (18 November), meaning the case will now go for a retrial, according to the Star Observer.
According to the newspaper, while White pled guilty to Johnson’s murder in May, he signed a statement less than 30 minutes later seeking to withdraw the guilty plea, maintaining that he “didn’t cause Johnson’s death”.
Court documents stated: “The Applicant also stated that he was confused, stressed and worried about his former wife ‘coming after [him]’ when he entered the guilty plea.”
White’s lawyers then allegedly attempted to get the guilty plea reversed, but on 3 May, the court found him guilty of murder.
The Court of Criminal Appeal said: “In the present case we are unable to conclude that no substantial miscarriage of justice actually occurred because, although the matter might be thought to be finely balanced, we are not persuaded that the result would have been the same had the interests of justice test been applied to the White’s application for leave to withdraw his plea of guilty.
“This is not a situation where ‘the case against the accused is overwhelming’, or in which, if the matter proceeded to trial, a guilty verdict for the murder charge would be a foregone conclusion. The possibility of a lesser conviction, of manslaughter for example, or indeed complete acquittal, cannot be ruled out.”
A coroner slammed Australian police in 2020, claiming that if authorities had responded correctly, Johnson’s murder could have been solved as a gay hate crime sooner.
Former New South Wales deputy coroner Jacqueline Milledge said that Johnson’s killer could have been found sooner if the police had not wrongly ruled his death a suicide in 1988.
“If Scott Johnson’s death had been regarded as it should have been, police may have made some connection, they may have seen a pattern,” Milledge told ABC News.
“It may have led to a very earlier resolve of the Scott Johnson matter than now, some 30 years later.”
The Star Observer said the case will now be brought back to court on 1 December.
