After 11 days of evidence and three days of legal argument, the murder trial of Kevin Harmer in the High Court at Christchurch was abandoned yesterday.
A senior Christchurch lawyer put the likely cost of abandoning the trial to the courts, the police, the Crown, and the defence at more than $100,000.
Harmer, who has denied murdering his wife Jillian Faye Thomas in a vehicle fire on their farm near Dunsandel, was remanded on bail for a new trial on July 8.
The jury was sent away last week for three days of legal argument and returned to the court at 10am yesterday for the announcement by Justice Rodney Hansen that the trial was over and they were discharged.
"From time to time, things are raised in the course of jury trials which are completely unforeseeable," the judge said.
"Such an event has occurred in this case.
"It is going to be necessary to discharge you and start this trial again later in the year."
He told them this had nothing to do with the jury, the court, or the defence.
Legal argument about the trial's abandonment was heard in closed court and cannot be reported.
Judge Hansen excused the jurors from further service for five years.
The Crown alleged at the trial that Harmer murdered his wife after a series of meetings with a prostitute in Wellington.
It was alleged that Ms Thomas was already dead or deeply unconscious when a fire engulfed the Land Rover she was in on the couple's farm on October 4, 1999.
Harmer continued the relationship with the woman from Wellington, and they were now engaged. She gave evidence on the first day of the trial on February 18.
The defence claimed the vehicle fire was an accident, and that Ms Thomas collapsed almost immediately when the fire engulfed her as she started the vehicle.
The Crown had planned to call 83 witnesses during the trial, which was expected to continue for about five weeks.
Evidence had been heard from more than 60 of them.
- NZPA
New Zealand
