Getting away with murder is easy in Australia

BY HIS own admission, Jonathon James Little was already "pissed off" when he crossed paths with fellow late-night reveller David Stevens in Fortitude Valley's Brunswick Street Mall in December 2005. Little was talking on his mobile phone – having a heated argument with his girlfriend – as he ambled down the noisy restaurant and pub district when 26-year-old Stevens appeared beside him.

Little, 20, had never seen the older man before but for some reason Stevens directed a comment towards him. Little told police he didn't remember the details except that it was some "smartarse alec thing". The consequences were fatal.

Little says he snapped and lashed out, punching Stevens once in the face. The impact knocked Stevens to the footpath but that was not enough for a seething Little, who later admitted to police he had a problem controlling his anger. According to one witness, he lined up an unconscious Stevens like he would a football and kicked him between the head and shoulder. He fled but was arrested a half hour later.

Little appeared shocked when he was told by police a few hours later that Stevens' brain injuries were so serious he was on life support. He cried the next day when he heard Stevens had died – and he faced life in jail for murder.

But an even bigger shock was reserved for the victim's family late last month when a jury hearing the case against Little found him not guilty: not just of murder, but also of the alternative charge of manslaughter. The result means Little is now free and can never be retried over the attack.

His acquittal has caused outrage in some sections of the community, but it is not the first time a murder case – that to a layman would appear to be open and shut – has ended in acquittal in Queensland. In February, Gold Coast baker Paul Joseph Haydon, 52, was found not guilty of murder and manslaughter despite admitting to killing his estranged partner Amanda Falconer in macabre circumstances in July 2004. Falconer had taken out a domestic violence order against Haydon just days before her death because of threats he had made against her children. She was alone at their former shared home at Oxenford when Haydon called in unannounced and the pair argued. Haydon claimed she came at him with a knife and that he accidentally stabbed her in the chest during a struggle.

When he realised he had killed her he didn't call for help but bundled her body into his car, set fire to the house and drove for 16 hours to Grafton in New South Wales with her body strapped in the car's front passenger seat. He then crashed the vehicle over an embankment in a failed suicide attempt. The jury deliberated for four hours before returning with not guilty verdicts to murder and manslaughter. The result stunned Falconer's grieving family, in the light of Haydon's bizarre behaviour.

In both cases, lawyers for the men argued death was an unintended outcome and the result of an accident. Accident is a regularly used defence in murder trials – and operates on the theory that the accused person and an ordinary person in their position could not have foreseen death as an outcome of their actions. In Little's case – that he or an ordinary person could not have predicted death as the result of his attack on Stevens.

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