Life sentence in murder case

Press, 6 May 1983, Page 4

Life sentence in murder case

PA Auckland A Manurewa youth was last evening sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his brother in Auckland in July. After a four-day trial in the High Court at Auckland, a jury deliberated for 4% hours before finding Steven John < Forsythe, aged 18, guilty of the murder of his brother, Tony Graham Forsythe.

The Crown allged that Forsythe had shot his brother in the head while he was asleep and then dumped the weighted body into a tidal estuary. Forsythe had pleaded not guilty to the charge. Another youth, Dennis Phillip Oxley, aged 18, also of Manurewa, had appeared with Forsythe and pleaded not guilty to a charge of being an accessory after the fact of murder by helping to dispose of the body.

Oxley was also found lilty. He had initially been

charged with murder with Forsythe, but Mr Justice Thorp directed that the charge be withdrawn because of a lack of corroborative evidence. His Honour sentenced Forsythe to the mandaotry term of life imprisonment for murder, while Oxley was convicted of being an accessory and remanded to May 24 for sentence.

During the trial, Forsythe claimed in evidence that his brother had often beaten him for no reason and that on the day of the alleged murder he had forced him to take a drug. For the Crown, Mr David Morris submitted that Forsythe held feelings of deep resentment towards his brother and that this had led to the killing.

Earlier report, page 23