Far North murderer Marcus Bax has 15-year jail term reduced on appeal

Marcus Bax at his sentencing last year for the murder of Far North farmer Peter Nilsson.

A man who pleaded guilty to the murder of his elderly neighbour in a brutal knife attack has had his 15-year jail term reduced after he was granted permission to submit new evidence as to his mental state at the time of the killing.

Marcus Bax, 40, was sentenced to life imprisonment in the High Court at Whangarei with a minimum non-parole period of 15 years in March last year. He had pleaded guilty to the murder of 77-year-old farmer Peter Nilsson on Nilsson's farm at Te Kao, in the Far North.

During his sentencing it was revealed that Bax felt "powerful" and enjoyed it when he slit the throat of the farmer whom he looked up to as a role model and a father figure for many years.

Bax appealed the sentence on the grounds that the minimum period of imprisonment was excessive. He said in his appeal that the judge took the wrong approach to fixing the minimum period of imprisonment and wrongly refused to take Bax's mental health issues into account.

The Court of Appeal has released its decision allowing Bax to bring in new evidence as to his mental health state at the time of the death and allowing the appeal. The court quashed the 15-year term and replaced it with a non-parole period of 13 years and four months.

Bax wanted to present new evidence - a report from a psychiatrist, Dr Karl Jansen - that was fresh in the sense that it was not available at sentencing. The Crown opposed the new evidence saying the sentencing judge had two psychiatric reports available at sentencing.

However, the Court of Appeal said those two reports were completed in November 2016 and January 2017 for the purposes of determining whether Bax was fit to plead, and were not for sentencing.

In fact, one of the report writers recommended that, in the event of Bax pleading or being found guilty, a pre-sentence psychiatric report might provide mental health information likely to improve understanding of the causes of the offending and inform rehabilitative interventions.

''Unfortunately, no pre-sentence psychiatric report was obtained. Given the complex nature of Mr Bax's mental health issues the sentencing Judge would have benefited from a report specifically directed to sentencing considerations,'' the Appeal Court said.

The court suppressed the details of the report and concluded that by failing to take into account Bax's personal circumstances as a factor reducing his culpability led to a material error in sentencing and the 15-year term was manifestly excessive.

During his sentencing it emerged that Bax threw a large chipper bar at Nilsson, before killing him with a butcher's knife after driving to his house following dinner with one of Nilsson's daughters, a few kilometres from where her father lived on August 4, 2016.

Bax then returned to the house he shared with Ms Nilsson and her family, including her brother, covered in blood holding the knife. Bax told them what he had done and asked for help in destroying evidence.

Crown solicitor Mike Smith said there was a high level of callousness and brutality against a 77-year-old man in his own home. It was a deliberate and conscious attack on a vulnerable man in an isolated area where police help could be an hour away.

In an apology letter Bax wrote to Nilsson's family, he hoped one day he could apologise to them in person and asked for their forgiveness.

Justice Edwin Wylie said Bax considered Nilsson as a role model and a father but impulse took over when he murdered him.