A former inmate at Mt Eden jail yesterday told a jury that Buddy John Grey wanted suicide victim Eruera Maaka as his cellmate so that he could get him to hang himself.
The youth, who has name suppression, said that he shared a cell with Grey for one night. He said Grey got him to swap cells with Maaka, who was in a nearby cell.
"He wanted to get him [Maaka] to try and hang himself so that he could get out on a Queen's pardon," the witness told prosecutor Ann Kiernan at the High Court in Auckland.
Grey, aged 22, of Whangarei, is accused of inciting 18-year-old Maaka to commit suicide by getting another inmate to write a threatening letter, purported to come from Maaka's co-offenders in a dairy robbery.
Grey is also accused of assisting Maaka to kill himself in the early hours of February 1, 1998, after Maaka moved into his cell.
The court has heard that Maaka was terrified of his co-offenders, who believed he had "narked" on them.
Maaka had told his family and a district court judge hearing the dairy-robbery case that he had attempted suicide since his arrest.
On Monday, an inmate admitted that he had written a menacing letter to Maaka - at Grey's request - supposedly from his co-offenders.
He also gave evidence of hearing Grey encourage Maaka to commit suicide. He said that Grey told him he helped Maaka hang himself by putting him on his shoulders, pushing him off and holding his legs. Grey was also said to have waited half an hour before raising the alarm "to make sure he was dead."
Yesterday, members of the jury appeared visibly upset when Maaka's suicide note was read.
He apologised to his family, said God was waiting in heaven and if they looked at the sky they would always see him in the stars. "It was better for me to take my life this way than be murdered by my co-offenders," he wrote.
Cross-examined by defence counsel David Jones, the youth who swapped cells with Maaka agreed that, in his original statement and at a depositions hearing, he said that Grey wanted Maaka in his cell to look after him because of the threats from his co-offenders.
The witness agreed that yesterday was the first time he had mentioned that Grey wanted Maaka in his cell so that he could hang himself.
He denied an accusation by Mr Jones that he was telling lies to the jury.
Another inmate told Mr Jones the cell swap took place after a prison officer asked Grey to look after Maaka.
That inmate corroborated the evidence of his cellmate, who said he wrote the note on Grey's instructions and passed it through a hole in the wall to Grey and Maaka's cell next door.
The witness said he saw his cellmate burn the note and flush it down the toilet after it had been passed back through the hole.
Prison officers told the court that when they went to the cell after Grey raised the alarm, Grey rushed past them and appeared very agitated.
When interviewed by police on the day of the suicide, Grey was "shaking uncontrollably."
The trial before Justice David Morris continues today.
Cellmate swap part of suicide plan - witness
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