Venod Skantha (32) has spent the last three weeks on trial before the High Court at Dunedin accused of the murder of 16-year-old Amber-Rose Rush and four counts of threatening to kill.
Defence counsel Jonathan Eaton QC said the motive that his client killed the victim because her allegations of indecent assault were a threat to his career was fanciful.
“If anything doesn't make sense in this case, it's that theory,” he said.
And the fact that Skantha would supposedly bring a 16-year-old along as a driver and later confess to him was equally far-fetched, Mr Eaton told the jury.
He said the evidence the defendant groped the victim as she suggested did not stack up, which was why the girl went back to his house after the alleged incident.
Mr Eaton accepted Skantha had offered Amber-Rose $20,000 for sex but that had been fuelled by alcohol and certainly not serious.
The lawyer was highly critical of the police, for what he called a “blinkered investigation”.
At the first police interview with the teenager – the Crown's key witness – police told him he was being spoken to as a witness, not a suspect.
Mr Eaton said the approach was “disturbing, alarming and, most importantly, it's dangerous”.
He told the jurors that if they did not accept the teenager's story, which stretched through three days of the trial, they must clear Skantha.
“Even if you decide there was some truth but he was telling lies because he was involved, it means you've got reasonable doubt about the critical evidence and you must acquit,” Mr Eaton said.
The key witness, he told the court, was infatuated with the young doctor.
“He was in awe of this guy, obsessed with his car . . . loved being his driver,” he said.
“He treasured that relationship. I suggest he'd do anything to protect Venod Skantha.”
The trial also heard from various witnesses who spoke of Skantha's sexual assaults and others who said he offered teenage girls money for sex.
The defence lawyer said it was “purely and simply trying to besmirch the character of this man” and bore no real relevance to the case.
The Crown barely mentioned it in closing, which he said was telling.
Mr Eaton said the teenagers who gave evidence during the trial were not being manipulated by the defendant – it was the reverse.
“They were taking advantage of him,” he said.
They saw Skantha as a “sugar daddy”, he said, who could get them alcohol and provide a police where they could drink it.
He also pointed to the police interview Skantha gave on February 4, two days after Amber-Rose's death.
The doctor, who had been drinking all weekend, was “cooperative, polite, calm” from the outset.
It was only when the accusations came that his demeanour changed.
“He was hurt by it; offended, shocked and hurt,” Mr Eaton said.
Skantha, he told the court, had been falsely implicated by his teenage friend.
Justice Gerald Nation will sum up the case tomorrow morning and the jury will then begin deliberations.
