A jury has retired to consider a verdict in the seven-week trial of a man charged with murdering farmer Jack Nicholas in a dawn sniper-shooting on a remote Hawke's Bay farm almost four years ago.
The jury of eight women and four men, which began hearing evidence against
accused man Murray Kenneth Foreman in the High Court in Napier on April 14, retired at 2.22pm today, after Justice Simon France's summary which lasted almost 90 minutes.
Earlier in the day, defence counsel Bruce Squire QC finished his closing address which lasted about three-and-a-half hours, broken by an overnight adjournment.
Yesterday a closing address by crown prosecutor Russell Collins lasted about three hours.
The trial relates to the shooting of 71-year-old Mr Nicholas about 6.30am on August 27, 2004, as he stood in his slippers at his garden gate outside the riverstone house in which he and Scottish wife Agnes lived at Makahu, a Kaweka Ranges foothills farm northwest of Napier.
Foreman, now 51, denies he was anywhere near the farm, and told police who first questioned him he was with his son and the boy's mother at his home more than 80km away in seaside Haumoana.
The judge and both counsel highlighted the evidence of Donna Kingi, who claimed Foreman told her over their garden fence on the day of the killing that he thought he had just shot someone.
Ms Kingi first made her claims after contacting the Sensible Sentencing Trust in November 2005, from Australia, to where she had completed a pre-planned move a month after the shooting.
The defence aimed at discrediting her evidence, suggesting the killer had to be someone "very close" to Mr Nicholas - son Oliver, who lived in a cottage about 500 metres away, was about the only possibility.
Both Oliver and wife Angeline gave evidence that he was at home when they heard three shots ring-out across the frosty Makahu Valley.
- NZPA
