Witness haunted by suicide

A witness told a jury in the High Court at Auckland yesterday that he was haunted by his part in the death of a young man who committed suicide in Mt Eden Prison.

Eighteen-year-old Eruera Maaka was found hanged in his cell at the jail on February 1, 1998.

Before the court is Maaka's cellmate, Buddy John Grey, now 22, of Whangarei. He is accused of inciting the at-risk prisoner to kill himself by getting another inmate to write Maaka a threatening letter-supposedly from Maaka's co-offenders in a dairy robbery.

Grey is also accused of helping Maaka to take his own life.

In her opening address to the jury, crown prosecutor Ann Kiernan said that Grey hoped that his "trauma" of finding his cellmate hanging would lead a compassionate judge to give him a lesser sentence or even a Queen's pardon.

Grey is alleged to have put Maaka on his shoulders and then pushed him off and held his legs to help him to commit suicide.

Yesterday, an inmate in an adjoining cell told the jury that at Grey's request, he wrote the threatening note to Maaka and passed it through a hole in the cell wall.

Ann Kiernan told the jury that at first the death was treated as suicide with no suspicious circumstances.

Only when the letter-writer went to the police in November 1998 did Grey's part in the death emerge.

The author of the letter, who has name suppression, told the jury: "It was haunting me. I was having bad dreams."

Earlier, Ann Kiernan told the jury that Maaka and Grey had been in the jail's youth remand protection wing.

Maaka, who had carried out an aggravated dairy robbery with three other people, was terrified because his co-offenders thought he had "narked" on them to the police, she said.

He had told family and a judge at the Papakura District Court that he had attempted suicide after his arrest.

At first Maaka was assessed as being at risk and was put in the prison's special unit, where he was monitored by medical staff.

But after nine days in the special unit, he was deemed fit to transfer to the youth remand section.

The witness said that at Grey's request, Maaka was placed in his cell for him to "look after him."

The witness told the court that several times Grey asked him if he thought he would get a Queen's pardon to "let him off his lag" if Maaka hanged himself in their cell.

The witness said that after writing the note and passing it through the wall, he heard Maaka reading it.

He said that later, after Grey passed it back, he burned it and put it down the toilet.

The witness said that he heard sheets ripping and saw Grey and Maaka plaiting them.

At one point, the witness said, he heard Maaka say to Grey that he did not want to do it.

But Grey allegedly grabbed a plastic knife and told him in an "aggro tone" that he had better do it- it was his (Grey's) only way out.

The witness said he went to sleep, but around 5 am he was woken by Grey banging on the wall, saying, "He's doing it bro, he's doing it."

He said Grey grabbed a mirror to see if Maaka was still breathing.

The witness said he told Grey to press the alarm buzzer, but Grey said he was "going to wait a while to make sure that he's dead."

It was about half an hour later that Grey sounded the alarm and started kicking on the door.

Later in the yard, the witness said, Grey asked him repeatedly: "Do you think I will get off, do you think I will get off?"

Cross-examined by David Jones, who appeared for the defence with Robert Kee, the witness denied making up the story about Grey's involvement in the suicide to get leniency on a charge he was facing.

The witness agreed that he originally told the police that Grey wrote the threatening letter to Maaka.

He told the court he lied initially because he did not want it coming back on him.

Referring to a photograph of the 20c-sized hole through the 31cm-thick wall, Mr Jones said the witness simply could not have seen what he claimed to have seen and his ability to hear would have been extremely limited.

Ann Kiernan told the jury that when interviewed, Grey said that Maaka had appeared quite happy the night before.

He denied arranging the note to be sent or helping Maaka to kill himself.

If he had thought Maaka was going to commit suicide, he would have stopped him.