Michael
Swann has abandoned his appeal against the length of the
non-parole term set for his $16.9 million fraud against the
Otago District Health Board.
The Weatherston family gave an emotional statement outside
the High Court at Christchurch after Clayton Weatherston was
found guilty yesterday of the murder of Sophie Elliott.
The 11 jurors hearing the trial of former University of Otago
academic Clayton Weatherston for murder were allowed to go
home last night, four hours into their deliberations.
The pivotal issue for the jurors deciding whether Clayton
Weatherston was guilty of murder was whether the defence of
provocation had been excluded, Justice Judith Potter said
yesterday.
By the time he killed Sophie Elliott on January 9 last year,
former economics tutor Clayton Weatherston was like "a coiled
spring", his lawyer, Judith Ablett-Kerr, told the jury in her
three-hour closing address yesterday
Clayton Weatherston made a deliberate, calm and premeditated
decision to kill or mutilate Sophie Elliott, either before he
went to her house or shortly afterwards, the jury hearing his
trial on a murder charge has been told.
Clayton Weatherston's "significant lack of empathy or
remorse" over the killing of Sophie Elliott were apparent to
a psychiatrist who interviewed him in prison in May last
year, the High Court in Christchurch heard yesterday.
All evidence in the murder trial of former University of
Otago economics tutor Clayton Weatherston has now been
completed in the High Court at Christchurch.
The Crown has been challenging aspects of defence psychiatric
evidence in the trial of Clayton Weatherston for the murder
of his ex-girlfriend, Sophie Elliott, early last year.
Aspecialist psychiatrist has given evidence murder accused
Clayton Weatherston was not mentally ill when he stabbed his
ex-girlfriend to death in January last year.
