A man convicted of murdering his partner by setting her on fire while she was asleep today appealed his conviction on the grounds that any statement made by his traumatised and badly burnt partner should not have been admissible at the trial.
Gary Mills was found guilty in January last year in the High Court at Rotorua of pouring petrol over his partner, Lyn Delzoppo, and setting her and the home they shared on fire.
Mills listened in on a hearing at the Court of Appeal in Wellington today via video-phone from Auckland Prison.
It was the Crown's case that, after a day of drinking on May 1 2008, Mills poured petrol over his partner's legs as she lay in her bed.
He then poured petrol around the house to block her exit. Mills then set his partner of eight years alight and ran up the road to get help.
Ms Delzoppo lapsed into a coma almost immediately after speaking briefly to a neighbour, then died from her injuries 28 days later.
For the appellant, lawyer Chris Wilkinson-Smith argued that a statement from Ms Delzoppo, when she was badly burnt and in shock should not have been allowed at trial as there was no reasonable assurance of reliability.
After escaping the house, Ms Delzoppo said to a neighbour, "I'm burnt, I'm burnt, I'm hurt" and then went on to say that Mills was the one who poured petrol over her.
Mr Wilkinson-Smith argued that Ms Delzoppo had a history of self-harm and blame. She had previously stabbed herself in the thigh and then blamed her partner.
"She was likely to frame her partner because of the state of mind she was in at the time of her statement. She had done this before but the difference was in this case she went into a coma so was not able to retract her statement," Mr Wilkinson-Smith said.
"She had enough presence of mind to have a spiteful thought but she could not know the effect of her statement."
He said the pair had been drinking all day - though this was not out of ordinary for them - but there had been no argument or trigger point to set off an incident.
Mr Wilkinson-Smith suggested Ms Delzoppo may have accidentally set herself alight or did it on purpose and it got out of hand.
For the Crown, Lawyer Brendan Horsley countered that because of the amount of trauma, Ms Delzoppo's mind was perhaps more focused and her statement reliable.
"Mills is the one who has a history of violence towards this woman. The family has attested to his violent relationship with his partner. There is no evidence that she was running a carefully crafted vendetta against Mills."
Mr Horsley said the argument that Ms Delzoppo had tried to frame Mills was problematic as it had not been put forward at trial.
The defence had been that even if Mills had set the fire, he hadn't realised it would get so out of hand and then tried to remove her.
Mills is serving life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years.
The appeal decision was reserved.
