Murder trial jury told to 'keep an open mind'

File photo / NZ Herald

A jury has been asked to think like a 16-year-old boy when deliberating over the stabbing of a homosexual policeman known to like teenage males.

Willie John Ahsee, 17, is on trial for the murder of Denis Norman Phillips, a gay policeman found dead in his Papakura home last year.

The teenager was 16 when he admitted to stabbing the policeman in his home, and yesterday pleaded not guilty to a murder charge.

The second day of the Auckland High Court trial began with an opening statement from Ahsee's lawyer David Jones QC, in which he asked the jury to "keep an open mind".

"We have [a] person who was a 16-year-old boy at the time. We have to look at the issues concerning a 16-year-old in that situation. We have to look at that situation from a 16-year-old boy's perspective."

He said Ahsee accepted he was the person who stabbed the policeman, but asked the jury to consider what was going through the teenager's mind at the time.

The defence case would "focus on the circumstances leading up to the wound being inflicted because under our law a person is entitled to use force if they are acting in self defence," he said.

Ahsee went to Mr Phillips' house on July 30 last year and left the house drunk, screaming and yelling down the road he had killed someone.

Police found Mr Phillips, a temporary constable, dead in his blood-stained flat the next day. He had been stabbed four times with a serrated knife.

Ahsee lived within walking distance of the older man and told police he used to regularly visit his boxing trainer.

Crown prosecution lawyer June Jelas said the policeman was a known homosexual with a liking for teenage boys and had made physical advances towards them in the past, including touching.

In her opening statement yesterday Ms Jelas told the jury the case was not a "whodunnit", but the issue was what the accused had in his mind.

The jury of six men and six women began to hear from the first of 74 witnesses this morning.

The trial is set down for three weeks.