The jury in the trial of Antonie Dixon, accused of hacking two
women with a sword and shooting a man dead, have returned a guilty
verdict.
Dixon was facing a total of eight charges including the murder of
James Te Aute in 2003, aggravated robbery, kidnapping and grievous
bodily harm relating to an attack with a samurai sword on two women
in the Coromandel.
The Jury retired at 3pm Thursday and returned their verdict after six hours of deliberations.
Dixon was found guilty of eight charges in 2005 but the original verdicts were later quashed and the re-trial ordered.
The Crown argued that on the night Dixon attacked Renee Gunby and Simone Butler with a sword and shot James Te Aute, his grand plan was to have a shootout with police.
Dixon's lawyers argued he was insane at the time and had since been treated for psychosis.
At this trial Dixon and his lawyers once again argued that he was insane. Dixon himself gave evidence saying God had told him to do it.
"I went outside and spoke to God and he said they were Judas's, to behead them, and to turn the sword and kill myself."
He said he believed a group called the New World Order was watching him and police were conspiring against him.
"There was definitely aircrafts following me, this whole thing's been a cover up," he said.
Several forensic psychiatrists gave evidence, one said Dixon had a personality disorder and was trying to escape conviction by embellishing his behaviour.
"Reviewing his past presentation, times when there's been a theatrical quality to the way that he's carried himself and acted," said Dr Justin Barry-Walsh.
For James Te Aute's partner, and mother of his three children, the retrial was more grief.
"The first few years were really hard and we had just started to get back on track and then we got hit with that," Jules Cropley says.
Until now the reasons for the re-tiral had been suppressed. It was granted because of errors made by the judge at the end of Dixon's first trial.
*The court of appeal said Justice Potter should have told the jury to question whether Dixon, with a disease of the mind, knew what he was doing was morally wrong.
*She also failed to assist the jury on how intoxication could have affected any mental disorder Dixon may have had.
*And the judge never offered the jury the option of finding Dixon guilty of manslaughter instead of murder.
