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The Crown and defence have delivered their closing arguments in the trial of a 14 year- old accused of murder at the Dunedin bus hub last year.
The defence has urged the jury to consider self-defence.
The jury must now decide whether to convict the teenager of murder, manslaughter, or find him not guilty.
Crown prosecutor Richard Smith gestures towards it as he delivers his closing address to the 12 men and women of the jury in the High Court at Dunedin.
The 14-year-old accused sits at the furthest bench from Justice Robert Osborne, his head is level with the shoulders of the Department of Corrections staff and the communication assistant sat beside him.
He wears a black button-up shirt with a stone pendant around his neck. His eyes are cast downward but he occasionally lifts them to watch Smith.
“[The defendant] chased [Enere] down, he deliberately attacked him with that knife, and he did so knowing full well that that would cause him harm,” Smith tells the jury.
“He ran the risk that Enere might die, and of course, we know that Enere did die as a result of that stabbing.
“This was never about self-defence... That’s murder.”
Enere Taana-McLaren, 16, was killed following an incident at the Dunedin bus hub last year.
Later, in summary for the defence, Anne Stevens KC urges the jury to consider the defendant’s trauma, his age, and his perception of Taana-McLaren as a threat.
“If you find self-defence, then that is not absolving [the defendant.] [He] does, and probably always will, feel the burden of, and responsibility for Enere’s death.
“You heard how he responded to hearing Enere died, how he broke down sobbing... [Psychiatrists] Dr Strange and Dr Pankhurst have separately, individually, expertly, found that he has post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from the death of Enere... and has had nightmares and flashbacks.”
The Crown and defence presented their closing arguments on Wednesday, marking the end of the two-week trial.
Afterwards, the jury retired to decide the fate of the young defendant accused of murdering Taana-McLaren at the Dunedin bus hub on May 23, 2024.
Smith told the jury that if they do not find deliberate intent to harm, they must instead consider a verdict of manslaughter.
“The Crown says, of course, that this was never really about self-defence... The Crown says you couldn’t possibly find that the defendants' actions in chasing Enere down and stabbing him were reasonable.
“Enere moved away from the defendant from the moment the defendant produced the knife, and the defendant chased Enere until he stabbed him.”
A jury must decide the fate of 14 year old accused of the murder of Enere Taana-McLaren. Photo / Ben Tomsett
“He didn’t need to chase him at all. Why did he? Because Enere had disrespected him, and he wasn’t going to be seen as a coward. That’s it.”
Smith challenged the defendant’s evidence, highlighting inconsistencies between his statements to police and psychiatrists – particularly regarding an alleged assault at a park in August 2023.
He argued that the teenager had deliberately exaggerated the incident to justify carrying a knife.
Smith also cast doubt on the PTSD diagnosis, which the court heard had been made by two psychiatrists after the killing.
They attributed the condition to the August assault, but Smith argued there were “some real question marks” over its validity.
“His explanations are all over the place. There’s no consistency in any of it. Why is that? He’s making up a story to try and fit this incriminating evidence.”
He told the jury that on the day of the offence, the defendant was in a “volatile mood,” that he had “squared up” to a teacher, that he had been sent home from school, and that he had sent messages from a Chromebook to a friend indicating a desire to “bash” a prefect who had wronged him.
Smith put to the jury that if the defendant had wanted to protect himself at the bus hub, he could have “run away, or gone to other people for help... He could have gone into the police station... No, he was up for it.”
“He might have been protecting his ‘gangster persona’ he adopted, but the law doesn’t permit you to commit violence because your feelings have been hurt.
“It was not self-defence in any real shape or form.”
Defence counsel Anne Stevens KC countered the Crown’s argument that the defendant’s actions were driven by pride or retaliation, and urged the jury to see a different perspective – of fear, trauma, and a desperate attempt to protect himself.
Anne Stevens KC represented the 14-year-old defendant. Photo / George Heard
She urged the jury to “not get side-tracked by the Crown’s efforts to belittle and undermine the effects of the [August] robbery on this [then] 12-year-old boy,” that she argues, crucially, contributed to his PTSD, and later decision to carry a knife.
She reiterated the defence case that the accused was “terrified” of Taana-McLaren, and his actions were in self-defence.
She showed the jury a photo taken of the defendant after the August robbery and assault – one eye swollen shut, his face bruised.
“It should be a matter of horror to all of us that a child should be subject to such an attack by other school children.”
She said the jury must consider the circumstances, as well as the defendant’s age at the time of the offence.
“On top of his age is his trauma – we add the fact that he had ADHD. This increases the effects of delayed development for [the defendant] making it even more likely he will act impulsively.”
She said the Crown had tried to minimise the “awful” experiences the defendant experienced, including the August assault, and that the suggestion of the defendant’s unreliability due to his differing accounts undermined his diagnoses of PTSD and ADHD.
She put to the jury that it was a “cruel distortion” for the Crown to suggest the defendant took out his knife to deliberately stab Taana-McLaren, and that Taana-McLaren had urged the defendant to “get it out.”
“It was as though a fuse had been lit in Enere... He meant trouble for this little boy.”
“It was a David-and-Goliath situation. David did not have a slingshot, he had a knife.”
She said that in the face of past bullying, the defendant had not been kept safe by his school or police, and had been forced to rely on himself for safety.
She said he took the knife from his parents’ kitchen “in the face of everybody else looking the other way – he did it to feel safe, he used it in the same way, namely to try and drive a threat safely away, to try and preserve himself”.
The jury will begin its deliberations tomorrow morning.
Ben Tomsett is a Multimedia Journalist for the New Zealand Herald, based in Dunedin
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