By Duncan Murray and Miklos Bolza

A police officer found guilty of unlawfully killing a 95-year-old woman will spend Christmas at home, with a judge declaring it’s not certain he will do jail time for the crime.

Senior Constable Kristian James Samuel White fatally discharged his Taser at Clare Nowland in a treatment room at Yallambee Lodge aged-care home in the southern NSW town of Cooma during the early hours of May 17, 2023.

Supreme Court judge Ian Harrison has ruled White can remain free from custody ahead of his sentencing in February, finding it is possible the 34-year-old will not be given a full-time jail term.

“I should not want to give unwarranted hope to Mr White that he will avoid a sentence of full-time imprisonment or to cause distress or frustration to those whose reasonably available and strongly held view is that nothing less than such a result would be appropriate,” Justice Harrison said on Friday.

“I am simply not comfortable making … a decision as a bail authority with respect to Mr White based on a conclusion that he will be sentenced to imprisonment to be served by full-time detention.”

In granting bail, Justice Harrison said he was acting on the currently incomplete arguments before him about what punishment should ultimately be delivered.

White didn’t react as the decision was handed down but afterwards shook hands with supporters and his legal team before leaving court without commenting.

Police and paramedics were called to Mrs Nowland’s nursing home after the great-grandmother grabbed two steak knives from a kitchen and raised them against residents and staff before throwing one at a carer.

White pulled the Taser’s trigger after only three minutes of negotiations to get her to put down the remaining knife.

He was heard in video footage played at his trial saying “nah, bugger it” before shooting Mrs Nowland in the torso.

She hit her head on the floor as she fell and died at Cooma Hospital a week later.

A jury unanimously found White guilty of manslaughter on Wednesday, triggering an attempt by prosecutors to have him placed behind bars.

Justice Harrison said the case was unlike any other he had encountered, saying Mrs Nowland’s death resulted from White’s misjudgment rather than acting out of anger or other malicious reasons.

“Ms Nowland’s death resulted from what was on almost any view a failure by Mr White correctly to assess the seriousness of the threat confronting him or, on another view, a failure to recognise or appreciate that he was not confronted with a serious threat at all,” he said.

“It was no more and no less than an error of judgment with fatal consequences.”

The officer’s defence barrister, Troy Edwards SC, previously argued a prison sentence for the officer was not inevitable and said his conditions if taken into custody were uncertain.

Evidence filed with the court showed White would be placed in protective custody for his safety because of his status as a serving police officer.

“The prisoner would be classified as ‘protection non association’ meaning he will not be in the physical presence of other inmates at any time,” wrote Detective Sergeant Mitchell Bosworth of the Homicide Squad.

White’s employment has been suspended without pay while NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb goes through the legal steps to remove him from the force.

The case has been listed for a sentence hearing on February 7.