A police car at the house where Taylor-Jade Hira, inset, was assaulted by Ranapera Taumata. Photo / Warren Buckland
A police car at the house where Taylor-Jade Hira, inset, was assaulted by Ranapera Taumata. Photo / Warren Buckland
Ranapera Taumata has been found guilty of the murder of Taylor-Jade Hira, whom he killed through a beating in 2019.
In the High Court at Napier, Taumata was also found guilty of a separate charge of assaulting Hira with intent to injure her.
The jury of eight women and four men took about two hours to reach their verdicts on Wednesday evening after a seven-day trial before Justice Christine Grice.
Eleven prison officers and court security guards were on hand in the court as the verdicts were delivered.
Members of Hira’s family watched from the public gallery and let out soft cries of relief as the verdicts were delivered.
Taylor-Jade Hira died in 2019. Photo / Supplied
Taumata’s trial in the High Court at Napier revolved around events at the Taumata family home in the early hours of August 15, 2019, which were captured on video cameras at the front and back of the house, where the couple often shared a sleepout.
The footage showed Taumata at various times grabbing Hira, throwing her to the ground, kicking at her and dragging her by the hair. In later videos she was non-responsive or unconscious.
The Crown said that Taumata also assaulted Hira inside the sleepout, where the cameras could not see, and this caused the “unsurvivable” head injury that led to her death.
The injuring charge related specifically to an incident in the driveway of the Hastings property, where the video cameras caught Taumata kicking his partner on the ground.
Defence counsel Andrew Schulze has been assisted at the trial by counsel Harry Redwood, who read an “admission of facts” statement to the court before the Crown and defence summed up the case.
Redwood said that Taumata accepted that he caused Hira’s death by an unlawful act. This was a formal acceptance that he was guilty of manslaughter.
Earlier in the trial, Schulze told the jury that the issue they would have to decide was that of Taumata’s intent when he assaulted Hira.
Ranapera Taumata, 30, appeared in the High Court at Napier charged with the murder of Taylor-Jade Hira. Photo / Ric Stevens
On Wednesday, he said again that it was a “single issue trial” and it was “all about intention”.
He said that the intent required for murder had not been proved by the Crown.
In his summing up, Schulze highlighted evidence which showed that Taumata had an intellectual disability which placed his IQ in the lowest 1 to 2.5 per cent of the population.
“He does not think the way you and I do,” Shulze told the jury of eight women and four men on the seventh day of the murder trial in the High Court at Napier.
“He simply doesn’t have … the same hardware, to use a computer analogy, that you would expect of an average member of the community.”
Napier Crown Solicitor Steve Manning prosecuted, assisted by Crown counsel Michael Blashcke.
Manning said Taumata’s low IQ did not take away his ability to understand that what he was doing was right or wrong.
He said that Taumata had been “thinking forensically”.
He gave the example of Taumata returning to property after taking Hira to hospital, to wash down what the court was told was blood from the driveway site of the kicking incident.
“He was smart enough, even under pressure, to get a bucket of water, and wash down the driveway,” Manning said.
“That’s smart. That shows forensic awareness,” he said.
