Husband admits manslaughter of bride during honeymoon scuba dive. but he will serve ONE year in jail
Husband admits manslaughter of bride during honeymoon scuba dive. but he will serve ONE year in jail
Honeymoon disaster: American man, David Watson, who swam off as his new wife died on the ocean floor during a honeymoon diving trip will spend an extra six months in jail after a court upheld an appeal.
David Watson, 32, a bubble-wrap salesman, was sentenced in June to four-and-a-half years for manslaughter, but under a plea bargain all but 12 months of the term was suspended, a decision that sparked outrage.
Christina Watson, 26, died in October 2003 after getting into trouble while scuba diving at a wreck off the coast of northern Queensland state where the couple were spending their honeymoon. The moments after the incident were inadvertently captured in a photograph by another person on the dive trip.
She was pulled from the ocean floor by a dive instructor after her husband failed to inflate her buoyancy vest or remove weights to bring her to the surface, instead leaving her to sink as he went get help.
The couple, from Alabama in the U.S., married in October 2003.
During a dive, Watson allegedly pulled his wife's oxygen tube free and held on to her until she lost consciousness. He then let her body float down to the sea bed.
He had been due to stand trial for murder, but the prosecution accepted his plea of guilty to manslaughter for not giving Christina emergency oxygen.
Watson was to stand trial in the Queensland Supreme Court for murder, which carried a potential sentence of life in prison, until the prosecution accepted the guilty plea to the lesser charge.
Prosecutor Brendan Campbell told the court the manslaughter plea was accepted on the basis that the 32-year-old Watson - trained to rescue panicked divers - failed in his duty as her dive buddy by not giving her emergency oxygen.
Campbell said Watson allowed his wife to sink to the ocean floor without attempting to retrieve her, and he did not inflate her buoyancy vest or remove weights from her belt.
'He virtually extinguished any chance of her survival,' Campbell said.
Outside court, Christina's father, Tommy Thomas, said his family was in disbelief over the sentence.
'I'm sure that the entire Australian nation as well as our country back home shares in the shock at what we've just seen, because it's a total injustice ... it's ludicrous,' Thomas said.
'It's an embarrassment to everyone involved. We believe that Watson murdered our daughter.'
'We can't believe how low the sentence is - and we're also in disbelief that the initial murder charge was downgraded to manslaughter.'
Watson married Christina in a ceremony described by her friends as her dream wedding in Birmingham on October 11, 2003.
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