The defendant, aged in his 40s, whose name and occupation remain suppressed, appeared in the Dunedin District Court this morning.
Prosecutor Sarah McKenzie said the Crown would offer no evidence on a count of making an intimate visual recording, which allegedly took place in 2022, and Judge David Robinson duly dismissed the charge.
Counsel Anne Stevens KC indicated there would be an application for costs made by the defendant over the aborted prosecution.
In August, the defendant was found guilty of possessing an objectionable publication following a judge-alone trial.
The defendant claimed he had the videos for work purposes, despite them being found on his personal phone.
Court documents said the man had three videos of "a livestream of the murder of multiple victims at the Deans Avenue (Al Noor) mosque".
In giving evidence, the defendant said he emailed the videos from his work phone to his personal phone but did not think they had been saved.
It was revealed at trial that the videos were easily accessible in his photo gallery among images of his family.
The defendant said he did not tend to revisit videos he took on his phone and had not seen the mosque shooting videos in his gallery, but the judge was not convinced.
Classification of the video as objectionable was “extraordinarily well publicised”, he said.
At the request of Mrs Stevens, no conviction was entered on the charge at the close of the trial.
The defendant will appear in court again on other matters in February.
