Karl James Copley Lane, 30, was jailed in the High Court in Wanganui this week for life with a minimum non-parole period of 14 years after murdering Wanganui mother-of-two Nadine Timmins in June 2008, The Wanganui Chronicle reported.
The prosecution said that Lane shot Ms Timmins "execution-style" in the head with a pistol as they sat in a car parked in Kowhai Street, Wanganui, late on June 28 last year.
Lane had asked Ms Timmins a question and, when she replied, he called her a liar and shot her in the left temple.
He then abandoned the car, with Ms Timmins still inside and, when it was found by a passing police patrol, she was still alive.
However, she died in hospital.
Crown prosecutor Lance Rowe said Lane had carried out a deliberate, execution-style killing in a callous and brutal way.
Lane was on bail on a charge of injuring with intent at the time of the shooting and had six previous convictions for violent offending.
Defence counsel Roger Crowley said Lane accepted Ms Timmins' shooting was intentional and deliberate.
However, he was taking P, as well as alcohol and prescription drugs, when he did it.
He was in such a drug-induced paranoia that he "lost control of the realities of his actions" and murdered a friend and who was supporting him in a time of personal crisis.
"That is the fact of methamphetamine addiction."
Justice Forrest Miller said the killing was brutal, callous and "utterly senseless".
"You decided you had the right to take the life of a woman who did you no harm," he said.
