A Nelson man was jailed for life today the murder of his neighbour in 2007.
Damian Harley MacDonald was sentenced, with a minimum non-parole period of 10 years, in the High Court at Nelson after a jury found him guilty in December, the Nelson Mail reported.
MacDonald, 22, left his 26-year-old neighbour Nicholas Winter to die on his front lawn after hitting him over the head with a wooden fence post.
Mr Winter was a man "who just happened to have chosen the wrong time to step outside his house", Justice Forrest Miller said, sentencing MacDonald on the basis he had acted in self-defence.
MacDonald had told the jury he had spent the afternoon drinking in a Nelson bar, where he had hit three people in the head.
Believing it was one of those men coming after him, MacDonald attacked Mr Winter after he heard a noise outside his flat.
Mr Winter had gone outside about 11pm on March 18 to collect a television from his car, and was found lying dead with the television resting on his foot outside his home the next morning, the jury had heard.
MacDonald had lived in the flat below him.
Justice Miller did not accept that MacDonald had taken responsibility for what he did.
MacDonald's lawyer Donald Stevens QC was not ruling out an appeal.
