KEY POINTS:
Emma Agnew murder accused Liam James Reid said today that scientific evidence against him must arise from accidental transference, contamination, or from being planted.
He repeated at his High Court trial today, on his second day in the witness box, that he was being framed for the murder of the deaf 20-year-old Miss Agnew.
He told crown prosecutor Pip Currie: "It would be a mistake for you to say that the police don't do that sort of thing."
"There are plenty of murder cases where it has come out that the evidence has been planted," the Christchurch Court News website reported.
Reid, 36, has pleaded not guilty to the rape and murder of Miss Agnew in Spencer Park, north of Christchurch, in November last year and the attempted murder and rape of a 21-year-old Dunedin student nine days later.
He completed his own evidence in his defence this morning, after starting to give his account of events at midday on Friday in the trial before Justice Lester Chisholm and a jury.
Then a detailed cross-examination began.
He has said he had nothing to do with the rape of Miss Agnew, nor the student in Dunedin.
He said he was with a friend buying drugs at the time Miss Agnew disappeared, and he acknowledged that he was walking in central Dunedin about the time of the attack there.
He is still to be asked about forensic evidence the Crown says links him to the Dunedin attack, but Mrs Currie asked him to explain his palm print found on Miss Agnew's car and a pubic-like hair identified as his by DNA tests, found inside the car.
He said he had examined a car with a For Sale sign in the window, which was parked in Gloucester Street early on November 15, the day Miss Agnew disappeared. He may have touched it.
He said the hair "could have come from anywhere". He said it could have got there by transference after it got on somebody else, or could have blown in from the street when the door was opened, or through contamination during the testing, or it could have been planted in the car.
He said the Crown's own telecom evidence exonerated him. "You can't place me anywhere near Emma Agnew or Spencer Park."
Asked why he would not give the name of the man he said he was with, doing a drug deal that morning, he replied: "I can get myself off the charge of murder, with the help of my lawyers."
He denied that he had been behaving oddly at Spencer Park when he and his girlfriend went to stay there, while Emma Agnew was still missing and before her body was discovered nearby.
He denied climbing out a window and hiding in the forest, or trying to avoid a police road block.
But he said he did not want to be questioned by the police because there were warrants for his arrest for breach of probation and breach of community work.
He said he wasn't nervous but he was jittery because he had been "speeding for days on P" - pure methamphetamine.
He denied later telling his girlfriend that he had killed and raped Miss Agnew, and that he had raped and tried to kill the woman in Dunedin.
The girlfriend alleged in evidence that Reid had confessed to both crimes. She also told the court that during the rough sex they had together he had punched her in the vagina - a type of injury found on Miss Agnew's body, and reported by the Dunedin attack victim.
Reid said in evidence that he had never punched his girlfriend in that way, and also denied discussing it with a man who gave him a lift when he was hitchhiking from Dunedin.
He denied making comments heard by prison officers while he was on remand relating to Miss Agnew's murder.
Asked if he had said, "It was good to make the bitch beg. I had to strangle her to shut the silly cow up," Reid replied: "I absolutely did not say that at all.".
The case is proceeding.
- NZPA
