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A 69-year-old self-styled pastor who was found guilty of assisting his wife’s suicide to claim on her $1.4 million life insurance has been sentenced to at least five years in jail, in a legal world-first.
Graham Robert Morant was convicted last month of encouraging and aiding his 56-year-old wife, Jennifer, to take her own life, so he could use her life insurance to build his own religious compound in Gold Coast Hinterland to wait for “the rapture.”
Jennifer had been suffering from depression and chronic back pain.
In a Queensland Supreme Court ruling, Morant was sentenced to a total of 10 years in jail for counselling and aiding his wife to commit suicide, and will be eligible for parole in October 2023, AAP and news.com.au reported.
“Mrs Morant was a vulnerable person with difficulties with her physical health. She was suffering depression,” Justice Peter Davis told Morant. “You took advantage of those vulnerabilities in order to persuade her to kill herself and then assisted her to do so once she had made that decision.”
Jennifer’s lifeless body was found on November 30, 2014, in the backseat of her car, with a note saying “please don’t resuscitate me.”
“You had an acute awareness that upon Mrs Morant’s death you would benefit from a payout from the insurance policies,” Davis said. “You counselled and aided your wife to suicide because you wanted to get your hands on the $1.4 million.”
The case is being called a landmark decision as there is no legal precedent for a conviction where a person counsels another into committing suicide, the reports said.
