Wanted man Gregory McPeake had one last cigarette as he grappled with police before dying during an arrest at Napier's Westshore Beach.
The moment was shown yesterday in Taser-camera images shown to a jury in Napier District Court on the second day of a trial in which four Hawke's Bay police officers are each charged with assaulting Mr McPeak with a weapon.
Judge Phillip Cooper, Crown prosecutor Ben Vanderkolk and defence counsel have all stressed there was no causal link between the death and anything any of the officers did in the incident that developed when he was ordered to get out of his vehicle in a beachfront car park just north of the Westshore Surf Life Saving Club just before 12.50am on March 13, 2015.
The officers, who have interim name suppression, each deny excessive force was used in the arrest and that their actions were reasonable and proportionate to what they knew about Mr McPeake and his circumstances at the time.
The images, from two Taser X2s used to shoot electronic probes into the vehicle, show the 179kg Mr McPeake sitting at the driver's wheel after police smashed the windows when there were no responses to loud-hailer calls telling him he was under arrest and had to get out of the vehicle and surrender.