Lengthy homicide trial nears the end
The trial of five men accused of murdering a man while kicking him out of the Mongrel Mob is near its end, with the jury retiring to consider verdicts.
Justice Helen Cull sent the jury out of the High Court at Palmerston North at 3.10pm yesterday.
They have heard evidence since February 11 in the trial of five men accused of killing Codi Wilkinson.
Quentin Joseph Moananui, Mariota and Jeremiah Su’a, Dean Arthur Jennings and Jason David Signal deny murdering Wilkinson, kidnapping him and his friend Kyle Rowe, wounding Rowe with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and participating in an organised criminal group.
Wilkinson and Rowe were allegedly assaulted in Ashhurst in September 2019 before being taken to Bunnythorpe, where Wilkinson’s body was found about two weeks later.
The Crown says the defendants attacked the duo with weapons while kicking them out of the Mongrel Mob, taking them to Bunnythorpe to present them to a drug dealer they robbed.
The number of defendants and charges mean the jury has to come up with at least 25 different verdicts.
That number would get even longer if they find defendants not guilty of murder, as they then would have to consider if defendants were guilty or not of manslaughter.
The judge said the jury had heard evidence from a range of sources, including text messages between defendants, CCTV footage and more than 115 witnesses in the witness box.
A key part of all the charges was if there was a common criminal plan.
The judge said the jury would have to decide if there was a common plan to attack Rowe and Wilkinson with weapons.
That plan did not require defendants to be in the Mob – Signal is not a Mobster, but a friend of Mob president Jeremiah Su’a – the judge said.
The Crown could not say who attacked Wilkinson with a machetetype weapon, but if the defendants were part of a plan to attack with weapons then they were liable for the actions of the ‘‘slasher’’, the judge said. ‘‘You are not required to solve who the slasher was.’’
But if someone did something contrary to any plan, the others were not liable.
The jurors were reminded multiple times to be careful with what defendants said of each other.
Some said there was never a plan, while Jennings said he was asked to drive to the Ashhurst address but knew nothing about extreme violence.
The judge said one defendant could not be guilty because another said so.
‘‘You have to look at the proven facts before you.’’
The trial has officially become the longest jury trial held in Palmerston North, running longer than the eight-week Palmiro Macdonald homicide trial in 2019 which ended in a hung jury, and Mark Lundy’s first trial in 2002.