Sean Davison no longer faces a charge of attempted murder but
says his conviction for assisting his mother's suicide was "a
personal tragedy" for him, his family and the memory of his
mother.
A man who split his partner's skull with an axe, exposing her
brain, after the blade of a knife he was stabbing her with
broke off in her chest, has admitted attempting to murder
her.
Two Dunedin police officers have been given sentences of
community work, reparation and, in one case, community
detention, for using excessive force on an offender.
When convicted
fraudster Michael Swann was given a long prison sentence,
allowance was made for his help in recovering property bought
with proceeds of his $16.9 million fraud against his former
employer, the Otago District Health Board.
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.
