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Kevin Nicholas Marshall was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment for attempted murder of his ex-partner.
Justice Graham Lang rejected Marshall’s altered confession, citing the attack’s motivation to pervert justice.
Marshall’s ex-partner suffered severe physical and psychological injuries, including scars and limited arm use.
A man who repeatedly cut and stabbed his ex-partner with a hunting knife, saying as he did so that he would decapitate her so she couldn’t give evidence at his domestic violence trial, attempted to alter his prior confession today.
Kevin Nicholas Marshall’s frenzied attack was instead motivated by voices in his head and the victim having called him a “black c***”, he insisted as his sentencing hearing in the High Court at Auckland took an unusual turn - with both the defendant and the victim being called to the witness box for impromptu questioning from lawyers.
The judge overseeing the hearing, however, had other thoughts about the changed story.
“I do not regard this [report about hearing voices] as likely to have played any part in the serious assault,” Justice Graham Lang said as he sentenced Marshall to nine years’ imprisonment for attempted murder.
The judge also ordered Marshall, 45, to serve at least half the sentence before he can begin to apply for parole - a decision that was made, in part, because of the aggravating nature of trying to pervert the course of justice through attempted murder.
“It may mean you are required to serve virtually the whole of the sentence before you are ready for parole,” the judge said before Marshall was led back to a holding cell.
Kevin Nicholas Marshall, of Tuakau, has been sentenced to prison for the attempted murder of his ex-partner insider her Papakura home on March 27, 2024. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Marshall’s ex told police she had fallen back asleep in the lounge of her Papakura on the morning of Wednesday, March 27 this year, after having taken an opioid pain medication for her foot, which she had broken the day prior. When she woke up, Marshall was standing over her, according to the summary of facts for the case - a document the defendant agreed to ahead of his guilty plea.
“An argument began about the upcoming jury trial,” the court document states, referring to Marshall’s legal troubles for a 2022 incident in which he punched his partner and threatened her with a machete. “The defendant wanted the victim to recant her allegations as he did not want to go to prison. The victim refused.
“The defendant pulled the victim off the couch and onto the floor. He armed himself with a large hunting knife from on top of the fridge. The defendant began stabbing the victim to the head and neck in a frenzy. The victim crawled into the fetal position to try to protect herself. The attack continued with the defendant telling the victim that he would stop her going to court by cutting her head off.”
She eventually fought him off and escaped her home - aided, she told police, “by the defendant slipping in all the blood that had resulted from her wounds”. As an additional indignity, she later had to spend $500 to have the blood stains cleaned, she said today in a victim impact statement.
Marshall remained on the run for two weeks, calling his ex the day before he was apprehended and describing the sound the knife made as it entered her body, she said. She would wake up in the hospital screaming, sure Marshall was in the room ready to finish the job, she said.
“My face is scarred and my nose is still really tender,” she told the judge. “I can’t brush my hair because it is still sore.”
She was hospitalised for five days as a result of the attack and has lingering physical and psychological pain, including blurred vision and vertigo and significantly limited use in her arm tendon, she said.
“I think I will be spending the rest of my life dealing with the after-effects of what he did to me,” she said. “The terror I felt that day will never leave me.”
Prior to the victim impact statement, Marshall and the victim were both called to give evidence over a single issue - whether Marshall was trespassing at the home at the time of the attack or whether he was actually living there.
Although Marshall had been on the run for several months after cutting off his electronically monitored ankle bracelet, he had been unofficially staying - but not permanently living - at the woman’s home, she testified. She had accompanied him to Manukau District Court two days earlier for the start of a family violence trial that was instead reset for a later date.
It was after that district court hearing, she testified, that they got into an argument and she told him to leave her home.
“He didn’t want me to say a statement, he didn’t want me to go [to court],” the woman said of the argument that led to her allegedly kicking Marshall out. “I had no choice - it was a summons. I didn’t want to be arrested, so I had to go.
“He didn’t like that ... I just told him to stay away.”
But Marshall insisted he was never actually told to leave the home.
“There was no argument,” he said. “I stayed with her.”
Justice Lang decided there wasn’t enough evidence to say beyond a reasonable doubt that Marshall had been kicked out. But he cut off the testimony as Marshall began to stray into his motivation for the attack, insisting that it wasn’t because he wanted to stop the woman from testifying against him.
“I just remember hearing voices as I woke up,” Marshall said. “I asked, ‘What was that?’ She says, ‘There’s no one there, you black c***.’”
Crown prosecutor Sophie Bicknell suggested the defendant wasn’t hearing voices at all that morning but was concocting a story now in an attempt to avoid responsibility.
Marshall denied it, but the judge said he was bound by the agreed summary of facts so it was a moot issue.
Attempted murder carries a maximum possible sentence of 14 years’ imprisonment.
Bicknell said the Crown had initially intended to seek a sentence starting point of 11-and-a-half years, but she reduced the sought-after starting point to 11 years after the judge’s decision regarding whether Marshall was trespassing. Defence lawyer Maria Mortimer asked for a starting point of 10 years, which the judge described as too low given the perverting justice motivation.
The judge increased the sentence by four months for offending while on bail, six more months for the prior offending against the same woman and an additional four months for his prior offending against other women - including the wounding of another woman in 2015 that resulted in a three-year prison term.
He was allowed discounts for his guilty plea and for courses he has taken in custody attempting to rehabilitate himself but declined to reduce his sentence for remorse or his mental health.
“I consider you are now at a stage where expressions of remorse ... can be given little weight,” the judge said, explaining that he has offended too many times in the past.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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