KEY POINTS:
The crown says Lipine Sila was "mowing people down in anger" as he drove through partygoers along Edgeware Road, but the defence maintains he was injured, panicked, and fleeing for his own safety.
With their closing addresses, the lawyers today put their very different interpretations on events in Edgeware Road about 10.50pm on May 5 last year when the car driven by 23-year-old Sila ploughed through young people in the street, hitting 28 of them.
Prosecutor Brent Stanaway said the crown had proved during the five-week trial that Sila had acted out of anger and had aimed to hit people with the car during the 8 seconds of carnage along Edgeware Road.
Defence counsel Pip Hall said the jury would be asked to decide whether 23-year-Sila was guilty of murder or manslaughter.
The charges have now been adjusted, as the trial draws to a close. The two murder charges remain but the rest have all been brought into line so that Sila now faces eight charges of intentionally causing grievous bodily harm. He denies all charges.
"He was not feeling panic. He was simply mowing people down in anger," Mr Stanaway told the jury.
Sila had sufficient control over the car to drive in a manner where he struck only people, rather than lampposts, kerbs, or parked cars.
There were no brakemarks or skidmarks during the eight-second drive.
There was no braking, although he said one witness thought there might have been a momentary flash of brakelights.
Experts said any slowing - either from braking or from the impact of bodies - would have lasted no more than half a second.
"He was not in a panic. He was determined to drive through those people with his foot flat to the boards, and was simply aiming for people. Otherwise there would have been braking or deceleration."
He then drove off, getting into two further crashes as he got away in a very badly damaged car, to try to avoid responsibility.
At no stage during the lengthy video interview had he said he had lost control of the car.
"He claimed to his girlfriend that, `God told me to do it.' That is the very poorest of excuses and the least acceptable in the context of this case. It is not consistent with panic or loss of control."
But Mr Hall told the jury that they must decide whether the crown had proved to the required standard - beyond reasonable doubt - that Sila "had the necessary and essential murderous mind".
He asked the jury to consider the real circumstances happening along Edgeware Road that night.
"Was it a scene of panic, violence, or mayhem, causing people real concerns? Was he assaulted, was he injured, and was he justified in all these circumstances in wanting to get away in a panic?
"When he told the detective that he didn't think about the persons he hit, or the consequences of his actions because he was too scared, was he telling the truth?" Mr Hall asked. "I suggest when you look at the circumstances, it very likely was."
He also pointed to evidence of a partial loss of control by Sila, and a reason for his swerve to the right - avoiding people on the roadway - that brought the car into collision with the densest group of partygoers.
By that time he had already hit some people, but there were bottles being thrown, the windscreen was broken, and the frightening and threatening events would have heightened his panic and "deprived him of the ability to think of anything else, other than self-preservation".
Justice John Fogarty will sum up in the morning before the jury retires to consider its 10 verdicts.
- NZPA
