KEY POINTS:
Antonie Dixon is the nearest thing to an axe murderer this country has seen for a while and probably the worst ham actor to have appeared in the High Court since trials were televised.
To support a plea of insanity he turned up to court with a bad haircut and a propensity to widen his eyes and roll them madly whenever he spotted the camera on him.
When the jury found him guilty, the only surprise was that the trial had taken so long. When the Court of Appeal quashed his conviction and granted him a retrial its reasons were suppressed until the trial's conclusion. The reasons, I thought, had better be good.
They became available this week and are a worry.
Dixon didn't wield an axe, he used a samurai sword to attack two women at Pipiroa near Thames on the night of January 21, 2003. And he didn't murder them, though they would have died if the ambulance had been a few minutes later.
He left them bleeding from, in one case, a broken skull, deep gashes in the neck and shoulder, a broken arm and a completely severed right hand. The other woman partially lost her left arm and virtually lost her right.
Dixon had driven off with a mate, both of them smoking methamphetamine on the way to Hamilton before Dixon went on to Auckland armed with a .22 calibre machine gun.
At a Pakuranga service station he parked near a car and mouthed obscenities at those in it. One of them got out, came towards him, then turned and ran. Dixon emptied the magazine into the fellow's back. That was the murder.
In court he had two hopes: insanity and intoxication. Insanity means an acquittal but the defence has to convince the jury of it. Dixon did his best. Intoxication can mean the crime was committed without deliberate intent. That partially worked for him.
The jury was not convinced he had an intent to murder the women, though had they died the verdict could have been different. You can be found guilty of murder without a proven intent. It is enough to cause injuries you know are likely to cause death and be reckless about it.
Acquitted of attempted murder of the women, Dixon was found guilty of wounding them with intent to cause grievous harm and of murder at the service station. Justice Judith Potter sentenced him to prison for a minimum of 20 years.
The appeal claimed her directions to the jury had been deficient on some points. Primarily she had mis-stated the case law on insanity. Case law is made in courts and it can change Parliament's law to a degree that sometimes astounds laymen like me.
The Crimes Act 1961 defines insanity for criminal defence purposes as: "Labouring under natural imbecility or disease of the mind to such an extent as to render a person incapable:
(a) of understanding the nature or quality of an act or omission, or
(b) of knowing the act or omission was morally wrong, having regard to the commonly accepted standards of right and wrong."
Five years after that act of Parliament, the Court of Appeal decided the phrase "having regard to the commonly accepted standards ..." did not mean what it says.
The legislature, in a judge's view, had not intended to change a law which has allowed people to escape criminal responsibility if they knew the commonly accepted standards but acted under the delusion the standards did not apply to them.
As Dixon's lawyer argued, it was merely necessary to show he did not regard his actions as "wrong for him to do". The Appeal Court agreed.
It actually criticised Justice Potter for having given the jury a copy of the section quoted above. "A literal reading of the section," says the appeal decision, "leads one to error."
It seems absurd that a person could be deemed legally insane and beyond criminal punishment simply because he did not regard murder, grievous bodily harm, hostage taking and the like, as "wrong for him to do". Isn't that the classic criminal psychopathy?
Fortunately none of this made the slightest difference to the second jury. Again, Dixon was found guilty of murder. Again his lawyer says he will appeal.
When you see the mess that legal minds can make, thank heaven for lay juries.
