Wilson said the killer's assault and indifference to Johnson's fate might have been 'driven by the offender's own self-loathing' as a gay man, but the court did not hear any evidence to prove it was a hate crime. 'The offender did a violent act, and that act was the direct cause of Dr Johnson leaving the clifftop in terror and dying on the rocks at its base,' Justice Helen Wilson said in her sentencing. White previously admitted to punching Johnson, with the court finding that he had caused the victim to fall to his death from the secluded clifftop in Manly.
'I think what we got this week was fairness,' he told media outside the Sydney court.
