KEY POINTS:
A jury in the High Court at Napier has heard the last evidence in the trial of Murray Foreman who denies murdering Hawke's Bay farmer Jack Nicholas in a dawn shooting almost four years ago.
Justice Simon France confirmed today the trial will go into the last of the "six to eight weeks" when closing addresses start on Monday, and said the jury of eight women and four men would retire to consider a verdict "early in the week."
The trial has involved evidence from 111 witnesses over 23 hearing days - 91 witnesses called by crown prosecutors Russell Collin and Steve Manning, and 20 by the defence team of Wellington QC Bruce Squire and associate Chris Stevenson and Napier barrister Leo Lafferty.
Foreman, 51, of Haumoana, has not given evidence in his defence.
The shooting is thought to have taken place on August 27, 2004, just before 6.30am, the time the partner of the victim's son Oliver Nicholas phoned his mother Agnes Nicholas from a farm cottage 500 metres away, inquiring about three shots just heard in the area.
Agnes Nicholas told the court she was still in bed when she heard the shots, and thought her husband must have gone outside to shoot rabbits or goats.
It was more than 20 minutes before she found her husband dead in the frost, without the gun with which she initially feared he must have shot himself, and after summoning her son, it was not until 7.08am that she rang 111 to raise the alarm.
Foreman, who lived more than 80km from the shooting scene, was arrested in April 2006.
- NZPA
