Half-brothers guilty of injuring man

Press, 8 May 1986, Page 36

Half-brothers guilty of injuring man

PA Wellington John Frederick Gillies and his half-brother, John Robert Manihera, have been found guilty in the District Court at Wellington on a charge of injuring with intent. Gillies, now known as Karl Bremner, aged 53, a sickness beneficiary, of Lower Hutt, and Manihera, aged 35, a wool presser, of Wainuiomata, were found guilty of the charge by a jury. Their names had been suppressed until the jury retired to consider its verdict. The jury deliberated for 254 hours. Judge Hobbs remanded the pair in custody to May 20 for sentence. The two men had denied assaulting a Lower Hutt car salesman, Dougal James Wealleans, in Mr Wealleans’ home on November 16 last year. Bremner told the jury he had “definitely not” kneed Mr Wealleans in the face or hit him with a bottle.

“I am a peaceable type of person,” Bremner said. “I definitely did not hit him, I’d swear it on my mother’s grave. "I definitely did not hit him with a bottle. He was mistaken,” Bremner said. It was a complete mystery to him as to why Mr Wealleans had said he had been kneed in the face also, he said. He said he was bordering on intoxication at the time and he was staggering around.

He could not say how Mr Wealleans had suffered the injuries, but it certainly had not been him. Bremner said he had been “pretty well inebriated” and had fallen backwards off a bar stool and hit his head earlier in the evening. Mr Wealleans’ recollection of being told he would be given concrete slippers or taken on a fishing trip he would not come back from if he talked to the police was from Mr Wealleans’ vivid imagination, he said. As far as he could recall Mr Wealleans had invited them to his home. Prosecuting counsel, Mr Warwick Gendall, said the injuries to Mr Wealleans had not be trifling but inflicted over a period of time with some force and they were deliberate.

There had been five instances of violence throughout the night. Manihera was involved in three of them, Bremner in two by himself, and two with Manihera.

The repeated beatings over a period of an hour and a half had shown an intention to harm the victim, Mr Gendall said.

“A knee into the face of a broken and bleeding man shows an intention to harm him,” he said.

Allegations that Mr Wealleans had knocked his wife around were fantasy.

Bremner’s counsel, Mr Bruce Buckton, said Mr Wealleans had seen the case as a contest. He had embellished things to satisfy a contest with himself and possibly with his wife and her son, aged 16.

The bottle had hit Mr Wealleans in a sideways motion. Bremner had been drunk and staggering — “a sideways motion was of the type you would get.”

The Crown case had been very unsatisfactory and had fallen far short of proving Bremner had intended to injure. Mr Des Deacon, for Manihera, said the Crown’s case had left too many questions unanswered. The biggest unanswered question was the non-appearance of Mrs Wealleans to corroborate her husband’s story.

He said his client was not lily white. He did assault Mr Wealleans but the injuries did not go so far as to warrant a verdict of intention to injure him. He asked the jury to bring in a verdict of assault. The evidence fell far short of proving intent.