During one of three emotional victim impact statements read aloud in court today, one of Paniani’s daughters recalled the trauma of seeing his lifeless body in the hospital bed that night.
“Dad had cuts all over his head, his face, up and down his arms,” she recalled. “I couldn’t stop crying. All I wanted was my dad back.”
She whispered into his ear that his newest grandchild had just recently been born.
“Sometimes breathing hurts because I relive the last moments my dad lived on this earth,” she said. “My father wasn’t perfect, but he didn’t deserve this.”
Paniani’s family also recounted how the victim had suffered a spinal injury in a 2016 crash that left him with mobility issues. Despite the setbacks in life, he still pushed forward and even went out of his way to help others who were in need like the defendant, they said.
“He was strong and resilient. Everyone respected and looked up to him,” one of Paniani’s granddaughters told the court through tears, recounting how she spend weekends and school holidays with him growing up.
“My happy and safe place turned into hell because of you,” she told the defendant. “I hope you get what you deserve, because my Papa didn’t deserve what you did to him.”
Fualau, who wore a T-shirt and wore his grey, thinning hair in a long braided ponytail, spent much of the hearing looking down into his lap as he listened to a Samoan interpreter sitting by his side.
Fualau grew up in Samoa as the son of a village chief but was expelled from school at 17. After five years of working at his family’s plantation, he was sent to New Zealand with the hope the change in scenery could help him turn over a new leaf, according to a report prepared for the sentencing hearing.
Unfortunately, his pattern of drinking and violence continued, Lang said.
In 2018, Fualau was sentenced in Manukau District Court for wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm after attacking his partner with a piece of lumber because she kept waking him up to talk. That attack continued even after the 4x2 broke over the woman’s head.
The defendant was released three years later on September 30, 2021, just three weeks before he murdered Paniani.
Murder carries an automatic sentence of life in prison. Lang today said his role was to decide how much time Fualau should be made to serve before he is eligible to apply for parole.
Crown prosecutor Chris Howard noted that it was a callus and brutal attack, while defence lawyer Michael Kan pointed out that both men had been drinking that night.
“He has a drinking problem,” Kan acknowledged of his client. “When he drinks ... when someone else is around him violence may result from this alcohol.”
But most violence involving drinking doesn’t involve lying in wait with a machete, the judge pointed out.
“You said he kept on swearing at you and saying words you were not happy with,” Lang later noted to the defendant. “You said you beat him up because you couldn’t take it.”
While there was a small degree of provocation, the defendant’s extreme response was “wholly out of proportion to [Paniani’s] conduct”, he said, noting that the victim suffered multiple skull fractures, broken teeth and dentures.
He ordered a 15-year minimum period of imprisonment, taking into account an 18-month discount for his guilty plea that saved the victim’s family the trauma of re-living the murder through a trial.
