Four men stood charged with murder in the High Court at Dunedin yesterday, following the violent death of a North Otago man last year.
Along with a woman charged with being an accessory after the fact, the four pleaded not guilty to the murder of Justin Conrad McFarlane (35), who was reported to have been kicked, punched, stamped on and hit with three different weapons at his Elderslie house, inland from Oamaru.
Yesterday was the first day of a trial that will hear evidence from about 130 witnesses, including police, pathologists, sports shoe company employees, scientists and a prison doctor. It is expected to last six weeks or more.
The court and waiting room at the High St court were packed with more than 100 potential jurors as the five sets of counsel made numerous challenges to those called up to jury duty.
The jurors selected saw for the first time the five defendants, including 23-year-old Robert James Cummings, of Oamaru, who had the word ''skins'' and ''die n... die'', tattooed on his forehead, and a large swastika on his left cheek.
He was joined in the dock by Steven Kenneth Boskell (19), of Palmerston, Ryan Warren Geary-Smart (24), of Oamaru, and Jacob Christopher Geary-Smart (23), also of Oamaru.
Stephanie Rose Lawrence (27), of Oamaru, also known as McCormack, was charged with being an accessory after the fact of murder.
In the September 2013 incident, a fellow worker at Elderslie Dairy Farms Ltd, concerned when Mr McFarlane failed to turn up for work, found him dead in his Pine Hill Rd house.
A homicide inquiry was launched involving more than 40 police, and the four men were arrested.
Before pleas yesterday, the court had to go through a lengthy process to decide on the jury.
Court officials spun the ballot box of jurors' names, before those picked walked towards the jury box under the close scrutiny of two Crown and nine defence counsel. With each counsel having four challenges, a parade of men and women found themselves returning to the public gallery after the lawyers rejected them.
Justice David Gendall said the trial was expected to take about six weeks, but ''it's just an estimate'' - it could be shorter, or longer.
Two jurors chosen were released from their duty after a talk with Justice Gendall, and replaced by two more.
The court heard the pleas of the five, then moved to an in-chambers discussion.
The public part of the trial will begin tomorrow morning. All potential jurors were asked to return then, in case they were needed.
