Akshay Chand stabbed Christie Marceau to death in a premeditated and planned attack. But he was not held accountable after he was proven to be legally insane.
The successful use of the defence has raised eyebrows this week but two of New Zealand's leading psychiatric experts have no doubt that Chand was insane when he killed Christie - and had been suffering an untreated schizophrenic episode for up to 18 months.
They both say there is no way he could have faked his symptoms. They say he has a serious mental illness with a very poor prognosis and recommended he be detained as a psychiatric patient indefinitely.
Under the Crimes Act 1961, no one can be convicted of an offence if they are proven to have a "disease of the mind" to such an extent that they do not understand the nature of the act, or know that the act was morally wrong.
Chand's lawyer, Mary-Anne Lowe, arranged for Dr David Chaplow to assess whether a mental illness was present.