Bayswater retirement village murder: John Salter’s four-year sentence ‘pretty rare’

A law expert says an 80-year-old’s four-year jail term for murdering his wife in a failed suicide pact is “pretty rare” and has likened it to a “sentencing with a bit of heart”.

John Salter was today jailed for four years in the High Court at Hamilton by Justice Francis Cooke after earlier admitting his wife Jean’s murder in the unit of their Mount Maunganui rest home.

Life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 10 years is the presumptive sentence for murder except in circumstances where it would be manifestly unjust.

John Salter’s was one of those cases.

His 78-year-old wife had mild Alzheimer’s for about a year before her death, and had recently begun losing things and forgetting numbers.

But it was only when a staff member from the rest home approached Salter about his wife’s “dangerous wandering behaviour” that he became concerned, as it was implied that she may have needed to be put into an Alzheimer’s unit.

Facing the rest of his life without her was “unbearable”, John’s lawyer, Tony Rickard-Simms told the court, and it was then they began discussing a suicide pact.

“His desire was that they should be together forever.”

On the morning of October 8 last year, in their Bayswater Metlifecare Retirement Village unit, Salter took a necktie he’d hidden under a couch pillow and wrapped it around her throat. He failed in his attempt to end his own life soon after.

Justice Cooke found there was a suicide pact between the couple and Salter was not someone who needed to be given the ordinary minimum non-parole period, stating that “would go too far”.

“No purpose is served for you to be given a minimum non-parole period.”

Massey University law expert Dr Chris Gallavin said cases where people avoided the 10-year minimum non-parole period “are pretty rare”.

“At law school, we discuss these all the time because they’re the interesting cases where the morality of an offence doesn’t necessarily comfortably equate to the conviction for what it says on the box: the murder.

“These cases are really rare, but there are ample cases like this around the world.

“Parents who suffocate their children because - there’s one case where the child, dying of cancer, could no longer stand the weight of bed sheets on them.

John Salter, 80, in the High Court at Hamilton this morning, where he was jailed for four years for the murder of his wife, Jean, part of a suicide pact gone wrong. Photo / Mike Scott

“So sometimes what you and I and the public would say is a murder is, in essence, a mercy killing. There’s very little moral guilt that goes with it.

“In those circumstances, it’s really appropriate that the sentence is not mandatory life imprisonment.”

Gallavin said it was only in the last approximate 20 years that the sentence for murder changed from mandatory life imprisonment to a presumption of life imprisonment.

“And it’s specifically for these types of cases,” he said.

Sentences of four years were more often seen in manslaughter sentencings, he said.

“It’s almost treating it as a manslaughter, but for the fact that it meets the requirements of a murder.”

Massey University law expert Dr Chris Gallavin say cases like John Salter's are ones law students discuss all the time.

He said there was a presumption that criminal law was “somehow synonymous with morality”.

“And it’s not always.

“There are some cases where you’ve got complete sympathy.

“That there are circumstances in which crimes happen that actually nobody in their right mind would say, ‘This was really at the level of murder to receive life imprisonment’.”

The Salters

John and Jean Salter met when they were 17 and 15 respectively, and got married a year later.

They moved to New Zealand in 1975 and both began working. They only had one car, so one would wait for the other after work each day so they could travel home together.

Rickard-Simms told the court today the couple, who didn’t have any children, were together “24/7″.

“It was slowly but surely that Jean started to lose her faculties, to the point where she would lose things, forget numbers.”

After taking a starting point of eight years in prison, Justice Cooke then issued 50 per cent worth of discounts.

He jailed Salter for four years and declined to issue a minimum non-parole period on that sentence.

“No purpose is served for you to be given a minimum non-parole period.”

Before sending Salter down to the cells, Justice Cooke told him “not to give up hope” and asked him to start thinking about his future and where he would like to spend the last of his days once he’s free from prison.

Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for nine years and been a journalist for 20.