KEY POINTS:
Murray Kenneth Foreman has walked free from the High Court at Napier after a jury found him not guilty of murdering farmer Jack Nicholas.
Asked how he felt, as he left the court building, Mr Foreman told reporters he "had to stay positive", before getting into a waiting vehicle and being driven away.
Mr Nicholas was gunned down on his remote farm northwest of Napier on August 27, 2004.
Mr Foreman, 51, denied any involvement in the dawn shooting, but did not give evidence at the trial.
The jury returned its verdict tonight after a day and a half of deliberations in the High Court in Napier.
The verdict came at 7.12pm.
Justice Simon France read to the court a rider that the jury had added to its verdict.
"The jury believe no one in the Nicholas family was involved in anyway."
During the trial the defence had raised the possibility that Mr Nicholas' son Oliver was the killer.
The jury had come back an hour earlier with a question which related to the time of a discussion that Donna Kingi said took place on the morning of killing between her and Mr Foreman when he was said to have come back from the bush.
Mr Foreman's friends and family were ecstatic, but there was no immediate comment from the Nicholas family.
Eventually Mr Foreman was led from the courtroom to a room used by defence counsel and stayed in there for 20 minutes or so with family.
After seven weeks of evidence, the jury, of eight women and four men, retired just after 2.20pm yesterday, and deliberated for four hours before an overnight break.
It resumed today, returning to the courtroom about 10.30am for half an hour listening to a secretly-made recording of a conversation between key prosecution witness Ms Kingi and Mr Foreman in March 2006, more than a year and a half after the killing.
The trial related to the shooting of 71-year-old Mr Nicholas about 6.30am on August 27, 2004, as he stood in his slippers at his garden gate outside the riverstone house in which he and Scottish wife Agnes lived at Makahu, a Kaweka Ranges foothills farm northwest of Napier.
Mr Foremandenied he was anywhere near the farm, and told police, who first questioned him, he was with his son and the boy's mother at his home more than 80km away in the seaside settlement of Haumoana outside Hastings.
The judge and both counsel highlighted the evidence of Ms Kingi, who claimed Mr Foreman told her over their garden fence on the day of the killing that he thought he had just shot someone.
Ms Kingi first made her claims after contacting the Sensible Sentencing Trust in November 2005, from Australia, to where she had completed a pre-planned move a month after the shooting.
The defence aimed at discrediting her evidence, suggesting the killer had to be someone "very close" to Mr Nicholas - son Oliver, who lived in a cottage about 500 metres away, was about the only possibility.
Both Oliver Nicholas and wife Angeline gave evidence that he was at home when they heard three shots ring-out across the frosty Makahu Valley.
Defence counsel Bruce Squire QC was asked what Mr Foreman's reaction had been, and replied "What do you think?" and then said he was tired and wanted to get away as soon as possible.
Friends and family of Mr Foreman outside the court said his life "had been ripped away from him", but they also said they felt sorry for the Nicholas family.
"This killer has to be found," said one woman, who would only be identified as Karen.
- NZPA
