Bruce Emery. Photo / Greg Bowker
The jury in the tagger murder trial will resume deliberations today after failing to reach a verdict last night.
The eight women and four men retired just before 10pm.
They started deliberating at 11.30am yesterday but returned three hours later to ask to again see the video interview
businessman Bruce Emery gave to police hours after the killing. It was the only time the jury has had to hear his version of events after he decided not to give evidence during the trial.
Emery has pleaded not guilty to murdering 15-year-old tagger Pihema Cameron on January 26 this year.
He confronted Pihema and a friend near his Manurewa home after he suspected they tagged his garage door.
Emery says Pihema "stepped into" the knife and he never thrust it into him, as has been alleged by a Crown witness.
Justice Hugh Williams yesterday told jurors at the High Court in Auckland they must make their decision based only on the evidence they had heard.
In his summary of the case, he said jurors had to "purge their emotions" and clinically study the facts.
He warned jurors could not be influenced by public opinion. "You have to be entirely un-influenced by prejudice or sympathy for anyone in the case."
To find Emery guilty of murder they had to be sure he was guilty "beyond reasonable doubt".
He then advised jurors on points of law relating to murder and manslaughter. Under New Zealand law, anyone charged with murder is automatically charged with manslaughter as well.
To convict him of murder the Crown had to have proven Emery meant to cause Pihema "bodily injury" and he was likely to have caused death and injury. They also needed to have proven that Emery was reckless - that death could have happened as a consequence of his actions.
For the jury to believe Emery - who maintains he was defending himself - they had to be satisfied he felt there was an "imminent force to be resisted".
But if they felt he was acting for other reasons, such as revenge, then self defence could not be considered reasonable for Emery to have used his knife.
