Two-weeks’ jail plea

Lawyers for Aussie’s killer make bizarre sentencing request

SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 2019 themercury.com.au SUBSCRIPTIONS 1300 696 397 LAWYERS for a police officer convicted of murder in the fatal shooting of an unarmed Australian woman are asking a judge not to send him to prison, proposing instead that he report to jail for a week each year on Justine Ruszczyk Damond’s birthday and the anniversary of her death.

State guidelines call for a 12year prison term, but Mohamed Noor’s legal team argued in a court filing ahead of yesterday’s sentencing that being imprisoned would keep Noor from making amends for killing Damond by doing good works in the community.

Defence lawyers Thomas Plunkett and Peter Wold proposed in a memo to Judge Kathryn Quaintance that she sentence Noor to turn himself in to a county jail for a week every year on the anniversary of Damond’s death and other week starting on birthday.

The proposed sentence would last the duration of Noor’s probation, which the lawyers didn’t specify in their request, and also would include an annual period of community service.

“This sentence honours the memory of Ms Rusczcyk and allows Mr Noor to continue to anher serve the city,” they wrote. “Just as importantly, it mandates that Mr Noor will continue to consider his actions and the great loss they caused.”

They submitted letters of support that they said show Noor is a kind and peaceful man who has tried to be a bridge between Somali Americans in Minnesota and the wider community.

Prosecutors were waiting until the hearing to recommend a sentence, a spokesman for the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office said.

A jury convicted Noor in April of third-degree murder and also second-degree manslaughter in the July 2017 death of Damond, a 40-yearold dual citizen of Australia and the US, who was engaged to be married a month after the shooting.