‘Family tragedies’ led to drug use by murder accused before curfew
The man on trial for killing Blessie Gotingco was a hard drug user who’d become preoccupied with scoring methamphetamine following a ‘‘series of family tragedies’’, the High Court at Auckland has been told.
The 28-year-old’s defence case began in court yesterday afternoon where he elected to give evidence to the jury, but opted to let court amicus and his former lawyer, Chris Wilkinson-Smith, deliver his opening address on his behalf.
Wilkinson-Smith said the large part of the defence’s evidence would be given by the accused himself, and would include information about himself, his family and his relationships, including the effect a series of tragedies had on him in May last year, when Gotingco is alleged to have been murdered.
His aunt had died, his mother had a stroke, and his partner suffered a late-term miscarriage in 2014 and ‘‘his way of dealing with that’’ was to take drugs, including cannabis, synthetic cannabis and methamphetamine, WilkinsonSmith said.
‘‘By late May of last year, drugs were the overriding influence of his life and going out and getting a fix was what he was focussing on,’’ he said.
He reminded the jury of what the accused had already told them – that running Gotingco down had been an accident: ‘‘It wasn’t a deliberate running over.’’
The accused would call a witness who would discredit a neighbour’s claims that the defendant was playing loud music the night Gotingco was allegedly killed, he said.
He reminded the jury of their requirement ‘‘to be sure – beyond reasonable doubt’’ if choosing to convict.
‘‘If you still have a reasonable doubt, your obligation as a jury is to acquit.’’
Previously the accused told the court he’d accidentally hit Gotingco with his car, and he panicked and put her into his BMW in order to comply with his 8pm curfew.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is defending himself with the help of his former lawyers, now court-appointed amicus curiae Chris WilkinsonSmith and Kevin Brosnahan.
Crown prosecutors Michael Walker and Kieran Raftery allege the accused deliberately mowed down Gotingco as she walked home from work in the North Shore suburb of Birkdale on May 24, before abducting and raping her.
He’s alleged to have killed her by stabbing her and slitting her throat, before dumping her body at Eskdale Cemetery, where she was found two days later.
Earlier in the day the court heard a GPS expert say that an error in data tracking the movements of the murder accused was ‘‘unsurprising’’ and ‘‘anomalies’’ in the technology were frequent.
More than 30 witnesses have been called to give evidence in the trial and in the past few days police detectives, forensic scientists and a GPS expert have been recalled for cross examination.
Yesterday morning GPS expert John Donaldson explained away some of the errors picked up in the monitoring of the defendant, who was wearing an electronic bracelet and was subject to a curfew at the time of the alleged murder.
A slew of anomalies had been recorded in the data, which had registered the accused travelling at high speeds through buildings and had put him in places miles away from his home, after his curfew had finished.
Wilkinson-Smith pointed to a May 24 recording which showed the defendant travelling down Eskdale Rd at 6pm, but 58 seconds earlier had registered him in Albany, many kilometres away.
Prosecutor Michael Walker said in his opening address this proved the accused had planned the crime because he was ‘‘scoping out a place to dump a body’’.
After his curfew expired at 6am on May 25, the data showed him travelling back to Eskdale Cemetery, where Walker said he dumped Gotingco’s body.
Despite Wilkinson-Smith pointing out errors that cast doubt on the reliability of the GPS data, Donaldson said errors weren’t unexpected and they had to be looked at ‘‘in context’’ of the rest of the recordings.
‘‘Best practice is to look at the other points, use the bell curve and point out the pattern,’’ he said, pointing out the data resumed showing the accused at Eskdale Rd for the remainder of the relevant time period, rather than in Albany.
He said if the GPS signal was weak, it would search for another point and occasionally give a false reading, before snapping back to where it’s supposed to be.
‘‘You see that quite frequently.’’