The jury in a Wellington High Court murder trial today retired to consider its verdicts, after defence lawyers described a chaotic battle outside an east Porirua taxi stand in their closing addresses.
The jury retired at 3pm to ponder the fate of Charlie Karaka, 33, who has denied the murder charge after Fitzgerald Risati, known as "Fitz", died from a single stab wound to the heart on the morning of December 8, 2007.
His half-brother Johnathan Poese, 25, originally also faced a murder charge, but was yesterday discharged on that charge by Justice Jill Mallon, who considered he could not reasonably be convicted.
Poese and Karaka are both charged with wounding with reckless disregard for safety after two others were also injured in the Cannon's Creek incident.
The trial is in its third week.
The Crown said Karaka had gone looking for revenge after his Mongrel Mob gang patch was taken from him and that Mr Risati and his friends were innocent victims.
Representing Karaka, lawyer Paul Surridge said his client used the knife only for self defence and the slain man may even have accidentally deflected it into his own chest during the melee.
"He (Karaka) did not have murderous intent at the time.
"Remember this is not a fight that took place according to the Queensberry rules. It was not one-on-one, it was a hard out sustained attack by a number of people."
The chaotic nature of the clash was further described by Poese's lawyer Val Nisbett, who questioned Poese's use of a meat cleaver on Risati Risati - the dead man's brother.
Mr Nisbett brought the jury's attention to eyewitness reports of clubs, baseball bats, crowbars as well as another, also bloodstained, knife.
"Johnathan's mistake was caring about his brother. Johnathan's mistake was waking up and getting into his car," he said.
Justice Jill Mallon, in her summary of the case, advised the jury to disregard Karaka's previous prison time and his gang affiliation.
She instead told the jury to question whether it was "reasonable to take this kind of weapon into this kind of fight".
They should also consider his going to exact revenge and retribution after losing his patch and a good deal of face to the "Crips" gang members earlier that night.
They needed to decide whether Karaka had "flailed out defensively" or whether he intended to stab Mr Risati.
