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A man who stabbed his own father to death after 20 years of horrific family violence has been acquitted of murder. He speaks to the Sunday Star-Times about how his baby daughter kept him going during the ordeal of a murder trial. Tommy Livingston reports.
‘Why did it have to be like this, Dad?’
I was telling him, ‘I am sorry, Dad, it was an accident, please forgive me.’ He didn’t reply to me. He never replied.
Son describing the night of his father’s death
It’s late in the afternoon when the phone rings through the cells of the High Court at Auckland.
It was the court registrar. Four storeys above, the jury had reached its verdict.
For almost a month they listened to how, on a summer’s evening last year, a son stabbed his father to death.
Before those six stab wounds, that father had inflicted a lifetime of abuse on his son and family.
The jury had to decide if it was murder or self-defence.
Before being taken up to the court, the young man’s lawyer asked if he was ready. He shook his head.
Standing outside the courtroom waiting to be called, he closed his eyes and prayed.
Somewhere in the public gallery was his partner and their 2-month-old baby girl. He knew if the verdict didn’t go his way, he could at least glance quickly at them before being taken away.
Before his mind could go too far, he heard: ‘‘Place the defendant before the court.’’
The door swung open and he walked into the dock. His heart in his throat, and his life in the jury’s hands, he closed his eyes and hoped for the best.
It’s been a week since the verdicts were handed down, and he still can’t stop smiling. The softly spoken 20-something barely touches the food in front of him as he details the past year.
Heavy suppression orders mean the young man acquitted of his father’s murder can’t be identified.
The Sunday Star-Times has identified him as ‘J’ and his father as ‘D’.
J is enjoying life away from the courtroom – and far away from where the killing took place. He grins talking about his plans to get a job as a labourer, move to a new house and maybe take his family overseas.
But for now he is just happy to rest.
‘‘I have learned through all of this that life is too short to waste on petty things. It doesn’t matter what the situation is, good or bad. You have got to make the most of it,’’ he says.
His smile widens as he looks at his daughter sleeping in a pram nearby.
‘‘When I was acquitted, I was given another chance to do the things my father couldn’t do, but wanted to do.
‘‘My routine was always being the older brother, and a dad to my siblings. That weight is gone now, in a way.’’
J’s daughter will grow up knowing her father, but for most of J’s life, his own father was a mystery. His involvement with the criminal underworld meant he wasn’t always at home – when he was, he could be cruel and violent.
‘‘My father was a man of tough love,’’ J says.
‘‘Being a kid, I never got to really have much to do with him in terms of a relationship. He was always in and out of jail.
‘‘He had his own demons. Every day he was fighting them. One minute he would be fine, but the next thing it was quite scary.
‘‘When it was bad, it was like Once Were Warriors.’’
J lost count of the number of times he saw his father beat his mother until she bled. If it wasn’t her getting hit, it was him.
But for all the shade, there was also light. He recalls his father’s more gentle, humorous and generous side. As a teenager, he began working alongside his father as a stop-and-go man.
Around the same time, his father entered a rehab programme to help curb his drug addiction. For a while things seemed to improve, but they took a turn for the worse at the start of last year.
His father had also grown up in an abusive household and those memories were revisiting him more often, it seemed. The week before his death he had pleaded with his own elderly mother to come to Auckland to help him. His demands went unanswered. ‘‘He was starting to say he felt unloved,’’ J says. ‘‘Like he didn’t matter to anyone. Maybe our love wasn’t doing enough.’’
A week later D returned home from work and viciously beat his wife. After the beating eased, bloodied and bruised, she sought refuge with her son at his home.
By this time J wasn’t living with his parents or three younger siblings, instead choosing to stay with his sister and brother-in-law in the same South Auckland suburb.
When she arrived, J ran towards her, barely able to believe what he saw.
‘‘I just thought, ‘Again, really? You guys are how old and you are still doing this’?’’ he says.
‘‘This time was not the same though. It was bad. Her eye was hanging out of her head. I had to put it back in.’’
The night quickly descended into chaos.
He and three of his younger siblings who were at his home, and his brother-in-law, locked themselves in the house.
Over the course of the evening J’s father came to the home shouting abuse and threats; banging on windows and walls from outside.
Eventually, the family saw the lights of a car going down the driveway. Thinking his father had left, J walked outside with a knife in his hand.
Soon after, he felt a punch to the head.
He has no memory of what happened afterward, but recalls the pair brawling on the ground.
The next thing he felt was his father’s weight pressing on him. He crawled out from underneath him, realising he no longer had the knife.
Then he heard: ‘‘You stabbed me.’’
J grabbed his father and held him in his lap as he struggled to breathe. On D’s side he found a stab wound which J put his hand on.
‘‘I said to him, ‘Why did you make me do this? Why did it have to be like this?’
‘‘I was telling him, ‘I am sorry, Dad, it was an accident, please forgive me.’ He didn’t reply to me. He never replied.’’
Just over a year later, J entered the dock of courtroom 13 in the High Court at Auckland. Three months after his father’s death, he was charged with murder. Prosecutors concluded the force used was excessive. D was stabbed six times, once through the heart.
J was granted bail, and held down a job right up to the trial. While his father had been in and out of jail, J had never once had a run-in with the law.
His daughter was born two months before the trial. . J was adamant he wouldn’t relive his father’s life of being in jail while his children grew up.
‘‘But the decision wasn’t in my hands, it was in the jury’s. When I walked into the court for the first time, I thought, this is real. This nightmare is not going away. At the same time, I was really disappointed in myself. I felt like I was breaking loyalty to my Dad by speaking about our lives and his history.
‘‘I had never spoken about my Dad’s darker side. I loved the man. I didn’t want people thinking bad about him.’’
The violence and threats over 20 years were brought to life again and again as the family gave evidence.
J chose not to testify because he couldn’t remember the few seconds when he stabbed his father.
‘‘The fact I can’t recall what happened eats away at me.’’
Most days during the trial were spent with his head in his hands as he grappled with the guilt of his family’s darker moments being exposed.
But the hardest moment came when Crown prosecutor Gareth Kayes played the 111 call made the night his father died.
In it, D can be heard yelling for help.
‘‘Hearing my dad’s voice again was hard. It was very emotional and scary. It brought back a lot of memories. As it was playing I was living that night again.’’
To keep his mind focused, he began writing letters to his family.
‘‘I started writing the last words of what I wanted to say to my family before I went to jail.
‘‘There were things I wanted to say to them. And things I wanted to say to the judge, and to the media. I needed to stop myself from standing up and saying, ‘Hey (Crown prosecutor) Gareth, you are wrong’.’’
At the end of each day he would go home and hold his baby, staying up most nights dreading when he would have to return to court.
As the trial crept to a close he could feel his freedom slowly slipping away. When Justice Ailsa Duffy finally sent the jury out to begin their deliberations, he watched them file out of the room thinking: ‘‘Please let me go home to my daughter. Please see the truth.’’
Less than four hours later, the call would come – the jury had arrived at a verdict.
‘‘Straight away my heart started pumping.’’
When the foreman announced he was not guilty, J dropped his head, walked out of the dock towards his daughter and said ‘thank you’. Cradling his child in his arms he wept, then left the courtroom.
‘‘Not until I held my baby did I feel the weight begin to lift. I let it all sink in. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t think I was going to hold her ever again.’’
Outside the courtroom a small group of family surrounded J, crying and hugging him. He noticed Crown prosecutor Gareth Kayes standing nearby, went towards him, and put out his hand.
‘‘I said, ‘I’ve got no hard feelings about anything. You’re just trying to do your job’.
‘‘He said, ‘Can I give you a hug?’ ‘‘We hugged and he quietly said, ‘Congratulations mate, go and enjoy your life’.’’
J says he can feel his freedom every time he holds his daughter, every time he hugs his partner, and every time he sees his mother.
‘‘Following the death, I said to my Mum (that) I wanted to say something to her and not to get upset.
‘‘I said, ‘You know I love Dad. But you are free now. You will never have to worry, Mum. I will never have to worry my Mum is dead ’cause Dad was in a bad mood’.’’
‘‘My mother started crying and said she understood.’’
What happened that night last year plays out in J’s head most days. In his dreams he tries to change the outcome, but it always turns out the same.
‘‘I think about it every night. Some nights I don’t sleep at all.
‘‘I will close my eyes and I live everything in my head again. It is very realistic. It has damaged me.’’
Despite the memories, the cycle of domestic abuse in his family has ended.
‘‘I get the chance to be everything to my daughter that my Dad tried to be for me.
‘‘That is what I found solace in – it helps balance out my pain.’’