Nelson attacker predicts successful insanity defence

A Nelson man has been found not guilty of attempted murder by reason of insanity, despite telling the woman he had just stabbed and doused in boiling water he would use madness as a defence to get off the charge.

In the High Court at Nelson yesterday Blair Vernon Swain, 41, was found not guilty of the attempted murder of a nurse on New Year's Eve 2009, the Nelson Mail reported.

The court was told Swain attacked the nurse, who has name suppression, when she came to take him from respite care at a Nelson residential address to a mental health acute unit.

He punched and kicked her and stabbed her once in the back, once in the shoulder and once in the neck, narrowly missing an artery.

Swain then kicked her in the stomach as she lay on the ground bleeding profusely. When she tried to escape he choked her and poured boiling water over her before she escaped.

Swain was not present in court yesterday as he was too unwell.

Justice Ronald Young declared Swain insane after seven reports from three psychiatrists confirmed he was not sane at the time.

Swain's chronic schizophrenia meant he would be detained in a hospital as a special patient.

The nurse's sister said after sentencing the case panned out as Swain had predicted.

She said the man had told police and a psychiatric professional shortly after the incident that he intended to kill her but would get off because of a psychiatric defence.

"At the end of the day the whole thing was inevitable, but it doesn't seem to have been done correctly."

- NZPA