Mother unreliable witness - Weatherston defence

BY JOHN HARTEVELT

Clayton Weatherson's defence lawyer has told a jury that Lesley Elliott's evidence about the day her daughter was killed is "less than reliable."

Judith Ablett-Kerr QC has finished her summing up for the defence in the Weatherston's murder trial.

Justice Potter will sum up tomorrow and the 11-person jury will retire to consider its verdict after hearing more than four weeks of evidence at the High Court in Christchurch.

Weatherston, 33, is on trial for the murder of Sophie Elliott, 22, at her Dunedin home on January 9 last year.

Weatherston admits stabbing Elliott 216 times, but says he is guilty only of manslaughter because he was provoked.

To gasps from the public gallery, Ablett-Kerr told the jury Lesley Elliott's recollection of the day her daughter was killed was less than reliable.

"With great respect and due deference to her ... what she saw on that day and the trauma she went through must, unfortunately make her a less than reliable witness as far as detail is concerned," Ablett-Kerr said.

"I don't want to have to say it, but I have to. It was dreadful what she saw, absolutely dreadful."

Gil Elliott, Sophie Elliott's father, stood up and walked out of the court room in apparent disgust at the comment.

Ablett-Kerr finished her closing telling the jury that: "You want to fight it but you can't because the science supports it."

She said provocation was supported by the evidence of their relationship supports it and by Elliott's own diary.

"[It] tells you that what the defence is saying is what happened and it's terribly, terribly sad. It's tragic, it's awful. But your duty is to bring in a verdict that is in accordance with the evidence and with the law," she said.

"The rule of law must prevail. Each one of you individually bear that responsibility.

"Members of the jury, reluctant as you may be, the evidence is that manslaughter is the verdict here, not murder."

NEW ARGUMENT FOR DEFENCE

Earlier, the defence unleashed a new argument which it says shows science is on his side.

Ablett-Kerr told the jury that forensic evidence showed Elliott's blood was found inside the pocket of Weatherston's laptop bag.

This was important because Elliott must have been injured enough to draw blood before Weatherston drew the knife from his bag.

The defence claims Elliott attacked Weatherston with scissors and then he reacted under provocation.

"How does her blood get in the bag unless that is the situation?" Ablett-Kerr said.

"The knife was only removed from the bag after Sophie Elliott was already bleeding."

Ablett-Kerr said "everybody would want to believe" Weatherston had taken out the knife unprovoked but that could not be the case.

"That's a very difficult proposition for the Crown to deal with. And I suppose that's the marvellous thing about science, it tends to give a degree of sureness about things," Ablett-Kerr said.

In an effort to try to tackle the problem, the Crown had at a late stage in the trial introduced the idea that Weatherston had taken the pair of scissors that were found blood-stained at the scene with him.

"The scissors came from the Elliott household. They didn't come with Clayton Weatherston," Ablett-Kerr said.

The Crown had retracted its suggestion immediately after it was made, she said.

"You see, the eagerness to arrive at your destination sometimes leads you astray. Sometimes the emotion drives you on and you lose sight of what is fact."

She said the jury needed to "discard emotion".

"Emotion is the enemy of good justice ... You must resist anger and revulsion and bring in your verdict on the evidence and the law that exists today," Ablett-Kerr said.

Far from being a deliberate, planned, calm, premeditated attack, the killing had been "spontaneous and horrific".

"It occurred because of what had gone on before and then the trigger of what had gone on in the bedroom. Can there really be any other explanation for what had occurred?"

Ablett-Kerr said Weatherston showed no signs he was about to kill Elliott.

"What would make a man who has a future ahead of him ... He's got a PhD, he's got a lovely [new] girlfriend ... he's got all of these things done that he's working on ... and he wakes up and he says, today's the day I'm going to kill Sophie Elliott. If you were applying common sense, where in the whole realm of things does that make sense?"

On the day of the killing, Weatherston's birthday, he had planned to meet his mother for lunch. He had arranged to go to karaoke with friends that night and there was evidence that he had arranged a work meeting for the following day.

"What caused him to do it? You know what caused him to do it. She attacked him with pair of scissors and that released all the emotion that had been coiled up inside him over the previous six months.

That's the reality, that's what happened."

Ablett-Kerr explained aspects of the relationship between Weatherston and Elliott.

"You must judge what occurred in the bedroom against the background of what had gone on before in the course of their relationship - and that was pretty horrific in itself," she said.

She said there was in fact three people in the relationship. The third person was Robert Alexander, a senior lecturer in the economics department at Otago University who supervised Elliott's dissertation.

Alexander worried Weatherston because Elliott had a close relationship with him and she would use him as a "dumping ground" for complaints about him, whether they were real of "fanciful".

WEATHERSTON 'SET OUT' TO KILL ELLIOTT

Earlier today the Crown gave its closing address, claiming that when Weatherston locked Elliott's bedroom door "the die was cast" and he had decided to murder and mutilate her, a jury has been told.

Crown prosecutor Robin Bates this afternoon told the jury that Weatherston's suggestion Elliott had attacked him with a pair of scissors was a lie.

He said a crucial point in the evidence was that Elliott's bedroom door was found locked when her mother rushed to help her.

"Why is the door locked in the first instance? Because the accused doesn’t want to be disturbed," Bates said.

"When he came back from the toilet, he locked the door at that stage ... He has some business to carry out in there.

"The die is cast. The decision is made when he locks the door," Bates said.

"And it’s shortly after that that we hear the scream and that scream has to be when he is going at her with the knife."

Bates said the Crown believed Weatherston may have decided he was going to kill Elliott before he arrived at her house.

He said it was possible Weatherston had gone home to get the knife he used in the attack before going to Elliott's house.

The "most telling part of the evidence" was that Weatherston had said that when he is walking up to the door he was expecting no-one to be home.

He had taken his bag with him, which had a knife in the pocket, despite intending just to leave a bag of gifts and a note then return to his car. That would take "all of a couple of minutes," Bates said.

"He has in mind what happens a few minutes later," Bates said.

"It’s not just coincidence that he was at the door and he was carrying a knife and a few minutes later Sophie was dead. The bag and the knife were there for a reason. He could have left it in the car locked it."

Weatherston had claimed Elliott kissed him on the mouth when he came in to the house, but Elliott's mother had not seen this and it had not occurred, Bates said. It was another "embellishment" by Weatherston.

Weatherston had claimed he had a discussion with Elliott in her bedroom, but this did not happen either, Bates said.

"That’s not what happened during that first phase because what does Sophie do? She goes down to talk to her mother briefly and she says he’s just sitting there, he’s not doing anything, he’s not saying anything," Bates said.

"Why on earth would Sophie go downstairs and say he’s just sitting there not saying anything if there had been some sort of discussion?

"It just didn’t happen, it just does not make sense and that’s where your common sense comes in to play."

Weatherston had locked the door once and then locked it again mid-way through his attack when Elliott's mother got the door open.

"Why doesn’t he want to be disturbed? Because he hasn’t finished what he set out to do - kill and mutilate Sophie Elliott," Bates said.

Bates said there were only scratches on Weatherston’s neck.

"She’s fighting him off. She’s getting wounded in the process," he said.

The defence of provocation was "scissors or nothing".

"There is no scissor attack in that room. There is no provocation," Bates said.

"There wasn’t any loss of self control either."

Weatherston had carefully and systematically killed and mutilated Elliott and he had a total lack of remorse for what he had done.

"The sensible and reasonable conclusion is that he did exactly what he set out to do," Bates said.

"And if he didn't, you might expect some degree of remorse. But for this man, it's exactly the opposite - she deserved exactly what she got."

"He is still saying, this is Sophie Elliott's fault, she caused this. It's her responsibility, not mine."

The jury should find Weatherston guilty of murder, he said.

'SAD JOURNEY'

Bates told the 11-person jury that the four week trial had been a "sad journey".

"We in this court room have been through a rather sad journey after the past few weeks and I'm sure almost everyone in this court room would turn back the clock if we could," Bates said.

He told them the three best attributes they would bring to deliberations were "common sense, common sense and common sense."

Weatherston had shown in his five days on the witness stand that he would lie and embellish.

"Invariably, there were aspects of spin, exaggeration, straight out turning the story around to suit his purposes," Bates said.

"Everywhere you look where the accused has done something wrong, if something reflects badly on him he simply lies about it to avoid responsibility. The Crown says you see that time and time again.

"That particular trait, the fact the he lies to avoid responsibility, he seem to have in abundance."

Bates said two different accounts were evident on many occasions.

A former girlfriend, whose name is suppressed, had given a very different version of an incident where Weatherston kicked her and jumped on her.

While Weatherston's version was "so far away from the reality," his former girlfriend's evidence was much more reliable.

"[There is] not a mean bone in her body, compassionate, no reason to not tell the truth," Bates said.

"There is no difficulty in determining that she is recounting this situation accurately."

Weatherston gave a "totally different picture".

"The accused is simply re-writing the script and turning it around to take the blame away from himself," Bates said.

The defence case would have to prove Elliott had done or said something to provoke Weatherston.

The evidence showed that very little, if anything, was said in Elliott's bedroom, Bates said.

Weatherston's assertion that Elliott had attacked him with a pair of scissors and knocked his glasses off was "both illogical and not supported by the evidence," Bates said.

"You simply cannot believe what the accused says about various events leading up to the 9th of January and in particular the events on the 9th," he said.

- © Fairfax NZ News