Killing the solution to a problem, jury told

File photo / NZH

The killing of Harold Skudder, whose skeletal remains were found in a bush area near Lower Hutt three years after he was reported missing, was the alcohol-fuelled solution to a problem, a High Court jury in Wellington was told this afternoon.

It was a problem murder accused Sean Dennis Brown had told a workmate about: Mr Skudder. He was the man Brown's mother had agreed could doss down for a few weeks on the lounge floor of the two-bedroom Stokes Valley unit she shared with her two sons.

But Brown, 27, a painter-decorator, did not like the new housemate, who did not pay board and treated the place as his own, "taking over" Mrs Brown's life.

"The solution was to kill him," Crown prosecutor Grant Burston said in his closing address.

Brown decided to do it on the night of his own 22nd birthday, January 24, 2007.

"He didn't give Harold Skudder a chance. He, in effect, executed him."

Brown dropped a 15.75kg ornamental cat statue on Mr Skudder's face, not once, not twice but three times, the prosecutor told the jury of seven women and five men

"Three times on a defenceless man asleep on the floor of the home of a woman who had given him permission to be there. The act was nothing but a calculated and controlled murder."

Had Brown kept his mouth shut he could well have got away with it, Mr Burston said.

That was what Brown intended when he kicked Harry Skudder's body down the steep bank off Moonshine Hill Road the night he killed the older man.

"But he didn't keep his mouth shut. Finally his murderous actions have caught up with him."

Brown did not kill Mr Skudder under the legal defence of provocation, the prosecutor contended.

But defence lawyer Greg King argued that his client did. Fuelled by alcohol, a "myriad of emotions" dating back to an horrific childhood with a violent father, Brown finally lost control.

He was "not the master of his own mind" and could not stop his actions.

Initially, Mrs Brown was more than happy to let Mr Skudder in but he overstayed his welcome, Mr King said.

Although he was not physically violent, the "wannabe" Mongrel Mob member had the family scared of his reaction if he was asked to leave.

"Crime does not happen in a vacuum," Mr King said.

"I am not asking you to feel sorry for him (the accused) but to attempt - hard as it may be - to understand what it was like to be him."

After years of feeling fearful, Brown believed he was acting to protect himself, his mother and his young brother.

When police eventually arrested him in March last year, he told them the killing was not planned and he admitted what happened without embellishment, exaggeration or minimisation.

"A cold-blooded, calculated execution? Rubbish," Mr King said.

The provocation faced by Brown was extreme. And, deprived of his powers of self control, "he did act in a horrendous way in that state".

Justice Ronald Young will sum up tomorrow morning, and the jury will consider whether their verdict is murder or manslaughter.

- NZPA