David Watson, 32, pleaded guilty at Brisbane’s Queensland Supreme Court to the manslaughter of his wife Christina, then 26, who died during a group dive around the Yongala wreck.
The couple, from Alabama in the USA, were on honeymoon, having been married for just 11 days.
Watson was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in an Australian prison, to be suspended after 12 months.
Watson had faced a charge of murder after Australian coroner David Glasgow concluded last June that it was likely that he had deliberately killed his wife.
Another diver in the group told the coroner’s hearing that he had seen Watson hold his wife in a “bear hug” before releasing her, after which she sank to the seabed while he headed upward.
After hearing this and other evidence, the coroner concluded that Watson was likely to have murdered his wife by physically restricting her, turning off her air supply until she succumbed, then turning it on again before releasing her.
Mrs Watson’s inert body was captured unwittingly in the background of a photograph taken by another diver nearby, as a dive guide finned down towards her after spotting her motionless on the sandy bottom.
A possible motive, noted the coroner, concerned Mrs Watson’s life insurance policy. Her father told investigators that, before they married, Watson had asked her to increase it and make him the beneficiary.
But last month, after Watson had travelled voluntarily from the USA to Brisbane to face trial for murder, the Crown prosecution decided to drop the murder charge in return for a guilty plea for manslaughter.
The reason for the altered charge has not been reported, but it is likely to have been that the prosecution was not confident that it had sufficient evidence to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Watson intended to kill his wife.
No mention, therefore, was made in court of any allegation that Watson had turned off his wife’s air supply. Instead, the prosecution concentrated on duty of care, stating that, when Mrs Watson "became distressed", Watson had failed as her dive buddy by abandoning her without attempting in any way to save her.
Watson would reasonably be expected to have attempted air-sharing and a controlled buoyant lift, or inflation of Mrs Watson’s BC and/or dumping of her weightbelt if sending her to the surface separately.
The defence’s explanation for Watson abandoning his wife to sink unconscious to the bottom was that he had “panicked” when he saw that she was in trouble, and had decided to seek help rather than attempt to rescue her himself.
Watson was an experienced diver who held a Rescue Diver qualification. The defence said that this was “just a piece of paper” and that, in reality, Watson had not had the confidence to attempt a rescue in a real emergency.
Mrs Watson was a novice, who reportedly had been nervous about diving but had felt pressured by her husband to do it. Before the fatal dive, the court heard, the pair twice declined the offer of an “orientation dive” in the company of an instructor.
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