Gotingco killer’s appeal fails

The man who raped and murdered Auckland woman Blessie Gotingco has had an appeal against his sentence rejected by the Supreme Court.

Tony Douglas Robertson was convicted and sentenced in 2015 for his brutal killing of Gotingco the previous year. He was sentenced to preventive detention for rape, and life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 24 years for murder.

Robertson appealed against his conviction on the grounds that the jury should have had the option of convicting him for manslaughter rather than murder. He claimed that the lack of availability of a manslaughter verdict meant a substantial miscarriage of justice may have occurred.

In assessing Robertson’s application, the Supreme Court considered whether there was a credible or plausible narrative in the evidence for a manslaughter verdict. In a decision released yesterday, the court’s three justices wrote that ‘‘nothing raised by the applicant suggests such a narrative was present in this case’’.

The justices also noted that the absence of the possibility of a manslaughter verdict had actually worked in Robertson’s favour during his sentencing at the High Court.

This is because if the jury had not been convinced beyond reasonable doubt that he murdered Gotingco then they would have acquitted him altogether – but if a manslaughter option existed, the jury could have decided the killing did not meet the threshold for murder, and instead ruled it was manslaughter which would still have seen Robertson convicted.

The Supreme Court concluded there had been no risk of a miscarriage of justice, and rejected Robertson’s appeal.