Murder accused Jia-Chun Hu was caught up in a classic love triangle, his lawyer told a jury in the High Court at Auckland yesterday.
In his final address, defence counsel Steve Cullen outlined how Hu, aged 41, had discovered that his 35-year-old wife, Jian Huang, was having an affair with another man.
Despite being utterly distraught, Hu decided to forgive and forget, doing everything he could to save his marriage.
He signed over all his property to his wife in a "noble but doomed" effort to win her back.
Mr Cullen said Hu was to suffer mental blow after mental blow.
He appeared to be succeeding in his endeavours to save his marriage, despite an official separation agreement, but then his wife's lover, referred to in court as the Hong Kong man, came back on the scene.
Mr Cullen told the jurors of the "cataclysmic mixture of circumstances" leading to the death of Hu's wife, including the trigger of her being on her cellphone to the Hong Kong man and her screaming and lunging at Hu.
He said that Hu snapped and was totally out of control.
If the jury discounted accident, the merciful verdict was manslaughter due to provocation, he said.
But crown prosecutor Aaron Perkins said the case did not come "within a bull's roar of provocation."
Hu is accused of murdering his estranged wife by repeatedly stabbing her when she returned to her New Lynn unit on February 26.
Mr Perkins said there was a sinister motive for Hu being in his wife's unit, as he waited to attack her.
He vented a tremendous build-up of anger, "knowing full well what he was doing, but he didn't care any more," said Mr Perkins.
Hu had decided to kill his wife before he saw her on the stairs of her unit, said Mr Perkins.
"He was so intensely jealous and angry, he carried out what he intended to do, namely kill her, knowing full well the likely consequences."
The jury heard allegations of domestic violence and of Hu's heavy gambling.
Mr Perkins said Hu had only himself to blame for losing his wife, a qualified doctor, due to his gambling and violence.
Earlier, Hu told the court that there had been a struggle while he was holding a knife.
"All of a sudden all the anger, all the jealousy, all the feeling of being deceived and all the humiliation I have suffered, which had pent up inside me all the time, erupted."
Justice Robert Fisher is due to sum up today.
Court told killing stemmed from classic love triangle
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