When jurors begin deliberating tomorrow in the joint murder trial of Dylan Harris, Adam North and Jasmine Murray, they will have to decide between two starkly different interpretations as to how drug dealer Robbie Hart ended up shot to death in broad daylight on a West Auckland driveway.
It was either the result of an operation so meticulously planned that it had to be an intentional execution, as alleged by the Crown, or it was the unintended result of bumbling, hapless criminals whose sole plan to rob Hart of his methamphetamine stash backfired so badly it was beyond anything they could have foreseen.
“His death was instant, and the bullet - there is no dispute - came from a loaded weapon that was being carried by Dylan Harris and pointed at Mr Hart’s head,” Crown prosecutor Robin McCoubrey said today as jurors in the High Court at Auckland spent most of the day listening to closing addresses from four different lawyers.
“This was an intentional killing,” McCoubrey continued. “This is no accident. Mr Harris wasn’t the victim of a huge misfortune. Everything that happened was meant to happen.”
Hart, 40, was found dead on top of his motorbike, with a single gunshot wound that had travelled through his helmet and into his temple, on the morning of November 5, 2021, during one of Auckland’s extended Covid-19 lockdowns.
Phone records later recovered by police showed he had arrived at the New Lynn driveway after arranging to sell 14g of methamphetamine for $3000 to a woman he knew through Facebook whose profile name was Sativa AK, referring to a strain of cannabis.
What he didn’t realise, prosecutors have said, was that Sativa AK’s phone had been stolen just days earlier by North and Murray and was being used by the couple to lure Hart to the fake drug deal, otherwise known as a “standover”.
Everyone agrees the couple picked up Harris in their stolen Suzuki Swift shortly before the meeting with Hart, then they waited in the car as Harris left to confront Hart. But what was discussed before the shooting and what each defendant’s intentions were remain in dispute.
“There is far too much planning and this is far too organised just for this to be a casual standover,” McCoubrey argued, acknowledging that police don’t know what the motive would have been or if Hart and the trio had some sort of pre-existing “beef”. “We may never know every detail of what was behind this ... but that doesn’t mean this isn’t what this looks like.”
The lengths the couple went to in an attempt to make Hart think he was dealing with Sativa AK “demonstrates that something very sinister was going on here”, he said.
Testifying on his own behalf yesterday, Harris admitted that he was the person who killed Hart as he attempted to rob him. He told jurors he thinks the rickety, sawn-off pistol without a trigger guard went off on its own after he tapped Hart’s helmet with the barrel, trying to intimidate the stranger into handing over the drugs, but he also acknowledged it’s possible he accidentally pulled the trigger during that same moment.
Either way, Harris insisted, the shooting wasn’t intentional.
Harris’ lawyer, Ron Mansfield KC, urged jurors today and yesterday to find his client guilty of manslaughter, which would reflect a death that occurred without intent in the process of committing another unlawful act such as threatening someone with a gun. He dismissed the Crown’s characterisation of Hart’s death as an “execution” as something belonging in a crime thriller novel rather than in a New Zealand courtroom.
The idea of a well-planned hit doesn’t jive with the “absolute sloppiness” in which the defendants approached the confrontation with Hart, he argued, pointing out that it was in broad daylight, Harris was wearing a facemask but not a substantive disguise, they were seen on CCTV pulling up to the scene and Harris wasn’t wearing gloves.
Those are all the hallmarks of a non-fatal standover, where there’s no risk of police involvement because no drug dealer is going to call for help, Mansfield suggested. If the plan was to shoot someone, there’s no doubt police were going to be involved immediately and it makes sense they would have taken better precautions to avoid detection, he said.
“You need to guard against being attracted to a theory where there really is no evidence ... jumping to the most serious or outrageous cause for that death,” Mansfield said.
It defies common sense, Mansfield argued, that someone would be willing to commit murder for $3000 worth of drugs, which would have then been split 50/50.
“Do you think logically if you were a paid hitman that $1500 would be enough for your services?” he asked jurors. “Are we serious?”
On the other hand, he said, it might be a “pretty good earn” for a non-fatal standover for which there would be no legal repercussions.
Mansfield was followed at the lectern by lawyer Sam Wimsett, who represents North and who agreed the group’s actions that morning were more suggestive of a group reacting in panic to a plan that had blown up in their face.
“If it was planned, if you’re devious enough to plan a murder, you’re sure as eggs going to plan a getaway,” he said.
He asked jurors not to pre-judge his client based on his appearance, his facial tattoos or his lifestyle. While North didn’t testify during the trial, Wimsett reminded jurors of what his client told a police officer upon his arrest five days after Hart’s death.
“I’m not a killer, bro,” an officer recalled him saying. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life but I’m not a killer.”
Wimsett also denied his client provided the gun to Harris, which Harris suggested during his testimony. Harris brought the gun himself, Wimsett said.
Lawyer Philip Hamlin, acting on behalf of Murray, took it a step further, arguing that there’s no evidence his client even knew there was a gun involved.
From the time Harris got in the car, Murray was in the back seat, literally and figuratively, Hamlin said.
“She was really a spare wheel,” he said, adding that her “limited role” in the standover was to impersonate Sativa AK if Hart called.
Murray had turned 20 years old three weeks before the shooting and she was dating a man 11 years her senior, Hamlin noted.
“She well may have been duped,” Hamlin suggested. “She doesn’t know the full extent of what is going on. In a way, she is some sort of innocent agent - she is being used. She is helping without knowledge of a critical feature: the firearm.”
Anticipating such an argument earlier today, prosecutors noted the size of a Suzuki Swift. It’s highly unlikely anything, much less a loaded firearm that is being cocked, could be kept much of a secret in such a compact car, McCoubrey said.
Justice Paul Davison is expected to sum up the case to jurors tomorrow morning, followed by deliberations.
A witness reported seeing a police officer setting up a rifle.