all pleaded not guilty to murdering Taylor, but have admitted his manslaughter<\/a>.<\/p>\nTheir defence turns upon a provision of the Crimes Act that defines murder: to be guilty of murder, a person must intend to cause another\u2019s death or be \u201creckless\u201d about whether their actions are likely to cause that person to die.<\/p>\n
The defence lawyers say these conditions were absent.<\/p>\n
Cleary, however, said the accused had made \u201cdeliberate choices\u201d to start and continue the violence, which caused Taylor multiple head injuries.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a difficult concept,\u201d she said. \u201cKicking a man on the ground carries a real and obvious risk of killing him.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Forster, representing Henare, said his client, who sustained injuries to his leg and face in the fracas, was \u201can unarmed man against an armed man\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoy Taylor started the violence. Trizarn Henare came in and confronted him, [saying] \u2018Why are you doing this?\u2019,\u201d Forster said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Ferocity\u2019 in act of breaking bottles<\/p>\n
Kumar\u2019s lawyer, Leo Lafferty, said there was some \u201cferocity\u201d in Taylor\u2019s act of breaking the bottles. The broken glass was spread out over some distance.<\/p>\n
He said the contention that his client went suddenly from \u201ccruise mode to murderous intent\u201d did not make any sense.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe death of Mr Taylor is tragic, and what you see may be an affront to your senses, but do not reason back from that that the charge of murder is proven,\u201d Lafferty said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou must put aside your emotions,\u201d he told the jurors.<\/p>\n
Matthew Phelps, for Hune, also said the throwing of the bottle was the \u201ccatalyst\u201d for the group\u2019s approach to Taylor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was not a planned assault. A few moments earlier, the group were discussing how they would get home,\u201d Phelps said.<\/p>\n
He said the incident had lasted 140 seconds, and in an ideal world, the four would simply have walked away from Taylor.<\/p>\n
![\"Boy]()
Boy Taylor was living mainly on the street at the time he died.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that they didn\u2019t does not make them guilty of murder,\u201d Phelps said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring those 140 seconds, the prospect of Mr Taylor\u2019s death did not cross Mr Hune\u2019s mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hune also received a cut to his face during the incident.<\/p>\n
For Alexander, Nicola Graham said the group had interacted with other people on the street and had walked past Taylor earlier with \u201cno issues\u201d.<\/p>\n
After the group left the scene, Alexander, who had been the \u201cleast involved\u201d in what happened, had no awareness of how serious the assault on Taylor had been.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe [Alexander] is guilty of manslaughter, but not guilty of murder,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In addition to denying murder charges, the four men have pleaded not guilty to injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm in relation to another man, who was assaulted earlier the same night.<\/p>\n
Justice David Boldt is due to sum up the case tomorrow. The jury of nine men and three women will then retire to consider its verdict. <\/p>\n
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME\u2019s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke\u2019s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWhat you saw in that footage was not a momentary loss of control \u2026 but a sustained, repeated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[34384,95,7814,15117,8452,11784,154877,16718,681,78,204035,3375,4275,3607,111,43,139,20419,69,4056,5412,163,1361,6859,54,1337,13118,36008,6736],"class_list":["post-402726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-alone","tag-and","tag-armed","tag-boy","tag-dangerous","tag-fatal","tag-fracas","tag-him","tag-homeless","tag-in","tag-instigator","tag-killed","tag-murder","tag-napier","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nighttime","tag-nz","tag-person","tag-streets","tag-taylor","tag-that","tag-told","tag-trial","tag-victim","tag-violence","tag-vulnerable","tag-was"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}