It was Warren Uata Kiwi who pulled the trigger of a gun in an attempt to murder Karl Andres Nyman close to two decades ago, a jury has decided.
It has also found the 58-year-old Tauranga man guilty of conspiring with others to murder Nyman.
The verdicts were delivered in the High Court at Rotorua this afternoon after eight-and-a-half hours of deliberations.
Justice Pheroze Jagose convicted Kiwi and remanded him in custody until October 18, when he will be sentenced.
He thanked jurors for their attention to the trial and wished them well.
The basis of the Crown's case was that Kiwi was contracted by at least one other person to kill Nyman in a dispute over whānau land "down the coast" for a fee of 5lbs (2.3kgs) of cannabis.
The defence was it was not Kiwi but his late brother Graeme, who died while serving a lengthy prison term, who pulled the trigger as he wrestled with Nyman at his home in the Rotorua suburb of Owhata in the early hours of July 31, 2002.