Killer doctor’s appeal dismissed
An appeal by the doctor convicted of killing Dunedin teen AmberRose Rush in her bedroom has failed.
Venod Skantha denied killing the 16-year-old on February 3, 2018, leading to a murder trial.
The jury took just over three hours to find him guilty of murder, plus four charges of threatening to kill, but the former Dunedin-based doctor appealed. That decision, released by the Court of Appeal yesterday, rejected it.
Skantha’s lawyer, Jonathan Eaton, QC, argued the evidence given at trial was both inadmissible and highly prejudicial.
He also argued that the judge’s summing up lacked balance and was unfair to Skantha.
During the trial, the Crown alleged Skantha, a then junior doctor at Dunedin Hospital, feared Amber-Rose was about to tell his employer and police about a sexual assault that would have effectively ended his already faltering medical career.
Skantha was alerted to her online posts by a mutual male friend, who became a star witness in the trial. The friend had accompanied Skantha to Amber-Rose’s home and then later to dump the murder weapon.
The defence suggested the star witness was the possible killer, and his role formed part of the appeal.
‘‘Mr Eaton mounted a wideranging and thorough challenge to the conduct of the trial and the summing-up, but we are not persuaded that there were any material errors,’’ the Court of Appeal said in its decision.
‘‘Those we have identified were not sufficiently serious, even in combination, to create a real risk of a different outcome . . . [W]e are satisfied the evidence proved his guilt beyond reasonable doubt.’’
Skantha was sentenced to a minimum period in jail of 19 years.