Trucking boss Cris Large, the former national operations manager of the Sydney company whose driver killed four Victorian police officers in a 2020 Melbourne freeway tragedy, has had his jail term wiped on appeal.
The Connect Logistics administrator had been found guilty of a category 1 offence under the Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL) on December 4, 2023, for breaching his duty as an operator and was sentenced to three years in jail in Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court on January 23, 2024.
It was reported that Large was the first person in a managerial position to ever be charged with this kind of offence, which pertains to incidents where any person in the chain of responsibility for a heavy vehicle exposes anyone to the risk of death or serious injury.
But in an appeal ruling at Sydney District Court last month, Judge Mark Williams said the offence for which Large was convicted was “not known to law”,” reports the Daily Telegraph.
“It does not appear to me that there was any principled basis for imposing a term of fulltime imprisonment,” Judge Williams said.
“With considerable respect for the learned magistrate, one is left with an uneasy feeling that…the unfortunate and tragic deaths of the four police officers impermissibly led to the magistrate imposing a sentence containing an element of assuaging the grief of the family members of the deceased officers.”
Williams, however, went on to say that Large’s failure to comply withi fatigue management systems would have been a “serious example of offending” under a different section of the HVNL, if it had been capable of being prosecuted.
The judge added that he would have sentenced Large to a two-year community corrections order with 250 hours of community service if the matter had been prosecuted under a different section of the HVNL.
According to the media report, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions has also consented to reimburse an unknown amount of Large’s legal costs.
Connect Logistics driver Mohinder Singh was jailed for 22 years for the crash that killed Senior Constable Lynette Taylor, Constable Glen Humphris, Senior Constable Kevin King and Constable Josh Prestney, but later had the sentenced reduced by three and a half years on appeal.
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