Australia will appeal sentence in honeymoon death

Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 5:10 AM Posted by Beijing News


BRISBANE, Australia – Australian prosecutors said Thursday they will appeal for stronger punishment for an American man sentenced to one year in prison for the death of his wife during a honeymoon scuba diving trip.

Christina Mae Watson, married just 11 days, drowned while diving with her husband on the Great Barrier Reef in 2003. Her body was found on the ocean floor. David Gabriel Watson, of Birmingham, Alabama, was sentenced earlier this month to serve one year of a four-and-a-half year sentence for manslaughter.

Watson was to stand trial in the Queensland state Supreme Court for murder, which carried a potential sentence of life in prison, until the prosecution accepted the guilty plea to the lesser charge.

"I have formed the view that this sentence is manifestly inadequate," Queensland Attorney General Cameron Dick told state parliament Thursday in announcing the appeal.

Coroner David Glasgow formally charged Watson with murder last June, saying it was likely Watson killed his wife by holding her underwater and turning off her air supply. The coroner said a possible motive was her modest life insurance policy.

Prosecutors said 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. They said Watson allowed his wife to sink to the ocean floor without trying to retrieve her, and he did not inflate her buoyancy vest or remove weights from her belt.

Christina's family was outraged with Watson's original sentence, and on Thursday praised Dick's decision to appeal.

"I'm certainly grateful to the attorney general pushing ahead with the appeal as quickly as he has," Christina's father, Tommy Thomas, said. "And I'm forever grateful for the Australian people for crying out over this sentence — otherwise nothing would have been done."

Watson, an experienced diver, had said in videotaped police interviews that 26-year-old Christina, a novice diver, started having trouble a few minutes into their dive. He said he decided to go for help rather than attempt a rescue himself.

A fellow diver told Glasgow's inquest last year he saw Watson engaged in an underwater "bear hug" with his petite wife, after which he headed to the surface while she sank to the ocean floor.

Watson told police his wife knocked his mask off and then sank too quickly for him to retrieve her.





Lightning strikes behind a windmill near Baldwin City, Kan. AP Photo/Orlin Wagner

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