‘As a parent, I look across at Ashleigh Bassillo-White’s family, at her sister, her mother, and her father, at her grandparents, and at her friends. I see their loss and their grief and it’s heartbreaking. If Joanne Neilson had done the right thing, what she knew to be the right thing, Ashleigh would be alive. She would’ve finished her VCE and be at university on her way to becoming a lawyer, her cherished dream. Ashleigh’s family would be going about their lives. But their family has been torn apart and they are devastated. Joanne Neilson’s responsible for that.
‘Should the court be lenient? If sentencing were only about punishment, then we might argue that Ms Neilson has already been punished: she’s lost her best friend and her life will never be the same again. But sentencing is about much more — it is about deterrence. Not just about deterring Ms Neilson from getting behind the wheel of a car when she’s had too much to drink, but also about deterring others. It is about denunciation, about letting everyone know this isn’t acceptable behaviour, that as a community, we won’t put up with drink-driving. It is also about restorative justice. A young woman is dead, and Joanne Neilson, sitting there at the back of this courtroom,’ he paused and turned around to look at Jo, ‘is the one responsible. Until she serves her time, she’s not entitled to be part of the community. Ashleigh’s family, Ashleigh’s friends, are entitled to justice.’
Sarah made some quick notes in the margins of her closing statement as Robert sat down. Judge Anderson tapped her pen on the table and nodded.
Sarah had considered launching her statement with a claim for joint responsibility — after all, the other girls, Ashleigh included, had entered the car knowing Jo had been drinking. They let their desire for a ride home taint their judgement and made Jo feel pressured to drive. They could’ve stopped her and didn’t. They should bear some responsibility for the accident. But she remembered Danny Maher, her law professor, an older man who’d spent his whole working life in legal aid: ‘Don’t forget that the family of the victim are in the courtroom.’ She’d spent many hours gathered with other students around the coffee table in his office for feedback on essays, for informal tutorials, and, later, when she was working for him as a research assistant in the third and fourth year of her degree, for ‘case strategy meetings’. He was a serious-looking, heavily bearded man, and the first-year students were terrified of him; she’d often find them, too frightened to knock on his door, loitering in the hallway outside his office. He was loud and brash, especially in court and in lectures, but one on one he was a kind and gentle man. ‘Some lawyers think they have to treat the “other side” like the enemy. Even when that “other side” is the victim’s family. Show compassion. Sometimes you have to say things that hurt the victim’s family, sometimes it’s inevitable, but some lawyers go too far.’
She thought about Danny now as she turned to look at Ashleigh’s family and past them, to Jo. She had asked him once, ‘How do you make sure you give your client the best chance, fight for them, if you allow yourself to feel sorry for the victims?’ They were in his office. He was sitting in a leather armchair, in front of a large window with a view of the courtyard where students sat to eat their lunch, to read, to make out. The room, with its high bookshelves, had a desk that was larger than the kitchen table in the share house she lived in with six other law students. He smiled at her. ‘Surgeons must be very careful / When they take the knife! / Underneath their fine incisions / Stirs the culprit, — Life!’ He often quoted Dickinson in response to her questions. Sometimes this was frustrating, but after a while she came to look forward to hearing the poems. ‘Emily Dickinson: you could learn a lot from her,’ he said, as if he were referring the students to a top criminal lawyer or an acclaimed philosophy professor.
Sarah glanced down at her notes. At the top she’d written, A good story elicits empathy. Her job was to tell a compelling story. This wasn’t a lesson she’d learnt from Dickinson, whose poems were sharp observations, not narratives; from Dickinson she’d learnt the power of words to change a person’s perspective. It was the hours spent watching Danny in court. He was thorough. Meticulous research and planning were part of the preparation for every case. He knew all the facts, understood every relevant law and precedent. Everything he needed, the answer to any question the judge might ask, was within reach. But it only made sense when Danny began to speak. Even when she disliked the client, even when she was convinced they were guilty, Danny made her see them anew, as human. This is a person not so unlike you and me.
‘Jo was nineteen years old at the time of the accident, twenty now. She’s young, even though the law considers her an adult. We might say she was old enough to know better. There is no doubt she made a mistake, a bad mistake. She exercised poor judgement. The results were fatal. Ashleigh was a beautiful eighteen-year-old girl. We’ve heard she had a bright future and a family who loved her. This is a tragedy that has impacted the lives of everyone in this courtroom, including Jo.
‘My colleague has pointed out already that Jo has been punished, that she’s lost her best friend, that her life will not be the same again. He’s acquiesced that Jo isn’t likely to be a repeat offender. It is also clear that even if the girls were arguing that night, they were friends, they loved each other, and neither of them would wish harm on the other.
‘A young woman is dead and Jo Neilson is responsible; the community demands justice. But before venturing into this notion of what justice is and how justice can be restored, if it can be restored, it’s only fair that we learn something about Jo’s life. That before, Your Honour, you sentence her, you have some sense of who she is and how she came to be driving that car on that night.’ Sarah stopped and took a few sips of water. Then she went on to give some background about Jo: Mandy’s pregnancy at seventeen, the separation between Mandy and David, the death of Jo’s grandfather when she was five years old. She talked about their struggles with money, and described their small, run-down house on Hyde Street, with the unbearable noise of the traffic, the diesel fumes, and the petroleum stench from the Mobil Oil terminal across the road.
‘By all accounts, Jo isn’t particularly outgoing or confident. Often shy, she didn’t have many friends in primary school. She was a chubby child, and there was some bullying and taunting. She met Ashleigh on the first day of high school and they became close friends immediately. Ashleigh was the more confident of the two, and she did better at school. Jo isn’t academic. But no matter their differences, they loved each other and loved being together. Both families attest to the strong bond between them.
‘According to the statements submitted by the other two passengers in the car, Jo and Ashleigh were out of sorts that night, they were fighting. Who hasn’t fought with their best friend? What were they fighting about? Jo says she thought Ashleigh didn’t want to be her friend anymore. Is this true? I don’t know. We don’t know. Did the fight contribute to the accident? We don’t know. Does any of what I’ve told you about Jo’s life explain the accident? Did any of it contribute to it? Does any of this excuse what Jo did? Not according to the law. Jo made a mistake. She shouldn’t have driven home from the party.’ Sarah paused. ‘Ashleigh, Laura, and Mani also made a mistake that night; they shouldn’t have got in the car with Jo. If all four girls had survived the accident, we’d be angry at all of them. But Ashleigh, Laura, and Mani weren’t the ones behind the wheel. They might’ve been, but Jo was the only one with a licence and she drove her friends around. She was the driver and she was responsible. It was a bad decision — the worst decision she’ll ever make, even if she lives to be a hundred. She’s pleaded guilty and is waiting to be punished. In her statement, she writes: I’ll get the punishment I deserve, but it won’t ever be enough. I hope for her sake that’s not true.