During the last week, three major murder trials came to an end. The first one to end, last Wednesday, was a trial of an immigrant from Zimbabwe, George Gwase, for the murder of his niece, 10-year old Charlene, in Christchurch. He was found Not Guilty which means he was acquitted. The following day, Chris Kahui was acquitted of the murder of his 3-month old twin sons, in Auckland. And on Saturday, a jury found Lipine Sila, Guilty of the murder of two 16-year old girls, and of injuring 8 others, when he drove his car into a crowd outside a party in Christchurch a year ago.
All these events were very sad as they involved babies, a child and two teenagers. They all took a long time to come to trial. For example, the Kahui twins died nearly 2 years ago. The cases were all heard before a judge and 12 members of a jury and all the trials lasted a long time: Chris Kahui’s trial lasted 6 weeks. But the verdict of the jury took a very different length of time. The jury in the case of Lipine Sila took nearly 3? days while the jury in the case of Chris Kahui took 10 minutes to decide.
In the Gwase case, Charlene died in January 2007, 16 months ago. Her parents had died of AIDS. She was HIV positive. Gwase’s lawyer, the lawyer for the defence, argued that she died from AIDS. The Gwase family did not try to get treatment for her HIV.
In the case of Sila, he admitted that he drove the car which killed the two girls but he said he drove in panic, afraid that others would attack him. He had just been in a fight outside the party. Did he mean to hit those people with his car? Was it anger or panic? He was hoping the jury would decide this was manslaughter, that he didn’t mean to do it, but in the end the jury decided it was murder.
The Kahui case was a very sad one. Someone abused those children very violently, many times, but the 9 adults living in the house at the time refused to talk to the police. The police arrested the father, saying he was the most likely person, but the jury thought there was not enough evidence to be sure. It is possible that many of the adults were responsible for the deaths but maybe we will never know. |