Mongrel Mob member Raymond Jury appears in the High Court at Rotorua charged with murder. Photo / Ben Fraser
Mongrel Mob member Raymond Jury appears in the High Court at Rotorua charged with murder. Photo / Ben Fraser
Did Raymond Jury brutally beat and strangle Rotorua man Trevor Rikihana to death? Or was he just at the scene when fellow gang member Rex Maney did?
This is what the jury is being asked to consider in the High Court in Rotorua in the trial of Raymond Jury, charged with murdering Rikihana at his Owhata address last year.
Both the defence and Crown wrapped up their cases this morning.
The trial started last Monday and was presided over by Justice Paul Davison and heard by a jury of eight women and four men.
Jury had previously pleaded not guilty for murdering Rikihana, 69, who along with Jury was a member of the Rogue chapter of the Mongrel Mob and died in the early hours of the morning on January 30, 2019.
The Crown argues that Jury strangled, violently beat and dragged Rikihana around a lawn before dumping his body on a friend's driveway, while the defence says it was in fact fellow gang member Rex Maney who caused the fatal injuries.
Crown prosecutor Duncan McWilliam pointed at Jury in the dock as he told the jury that the man who murdered Rikihana was sitting in the room.
Jury was the only person who turned up at Rikihana's in the early hours of January 30 and went on to carry out a "prolonged violent attack" with "murderous intent", he said.
Two Crown witness statements mentioned how Jury and Rikihana had argued over money and something to do with a broken-down car the night Rikihana was killed, he said.
The argument escalated, with Rikihana's niece Lauren Eketone hearing "stomps and kicks" and her uncle "groaning" on the ground, he said.
He said that Jury would have "towered over" Rikihana, who was an elderly man weighing only 49kg and standing at 168cm tall.
For this reason, Jury would have known that the more than 70 injuries that Rikihana suffered, the majority around the head, face and neck, would have killed him, he said.
"It's deliberate... this is murder," McWilliam said.
Murder-accused Raymond Jury takes the stand at his own High Court trial. Photo / Caroline Fleming
Rikihana's blood was found on both a hammer and a towel on the scene, which McWilliam said were consistent with Rikihana's injuries and being strangled and hit with a blunt force object.
Jury's blood was found on the light switch of Rikihana's room and on Rikihana's shirt he was wearing the night of his death, he said.
The car Jury had been driving was found the next morning burnt out in Hastings, which McWilliam said coincidentally destroyed the evidence of Rikihana and his blood ever being in there.
McWilliam argued that Maney, who died of lung cancer last July, would not have been able to carry out such a "sustained prolonged attack" with the state of his health.
Eketone, who had known Maney since she was 11 years old, had denied hearing his voice at her home the night of the brutal beating, he said
"It's convenient to blame a dead person," McWilliam said.
However, in Jury's lawyer Bill Nabney's closing, he said the text from Maney that Jury received on the morning of January 30 saying "the old c***'s dead" was "quite telling" in his involvement.
It "says it all", he said.
He did not dispute that Jury was at the scene the night of the murder, but he was not involved as Rikihana was his "old friend", Nabney said.
He said Maney had lied in the days following Rikihana's death by telling police he knew nothing about it when evidence later showed he did.
Nabney referenced the Crown's evidence of a letter from Maney about that night, saying it was "coincidental" that a letter written to his son dated on January 30 would be sitting at his table on February 18 when police showed up with a search warrant.
He argued that Maney's various statements of what happened that night were "self-serving" and did not line up with other evidence from both Eketone and some CCTV timings.
Nabney highlighted how other DNA was found on Rikihana's shirt that could not be identified and the "speck" of Jury's blood that was found lined up with his evidence of carrying Rikihana to the car.
When it came to the burnt car, he said Jury's daughter made statements that made it clear that this was not his doing.
"He [Jury] is not guilty for a charge of murder," Nabney said in closing.
