Appeal court previously quashed manslaughter conviction and sentence
Seeing no apparent miscarriage of justice and no error in an assessment of the position advanced, New Zealand’s Supreme Court dismissed an application for leave to appeal the Court of Appeal’s dismissal of an appeal against a murder conviction.
In Ronaki-Wihapi v R [2026] NZSC 30, the then-17-year-old applicant was driving a car on 26 December 2022. In the car, the applicant’s mother was arguing over the phone with her partner at the time.
A short distance ahead of the vehicle, the mother’s partner was visible on the road. The mother told the applicant to hit her partner with the car. The applicant did so twice, with both strikes occurring within a minute of each other.
At the start of the trial, the applicant and his mother jointly faced a single count of murder. She faced another charge of trying to pervert the course of justice, as she initially alleged that she had been driving the vehicle at the time.
Ultimately, the applicant accepted responsibility for what he had done. During the trial, the Crown received leave to amend the initial murder charge against him for the vehicle’s first strike to add a non-alternative murder charge for the car’s second strike.
A forensic pathologist called by the Crown made the following findings:
A jury trial addressed charges for two homicides: manslaughter and murder. The applicant appealed his convictions for both manslaughter and murder.
The Court of Appeal of New Zealand upheld the applicant’s murder conviction. However, the appeal court quashed the applicant’s manslaughter conviction and sentence because the court could not convict him twice for culpable homicides of the same victim.
Alleging a miscarriage of justice, the applicant applied for leave to appeal against his murder conviction. He cited:
The applicant argued that the earlier verdicts acquitting him of murder and convicting him of manslaughter in connection with the first strike precluded later verdicts on the second charge for the same offence.
The applicant asserted that the verdict in connection with the second charge was unreasonable because the jury could not be certain beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim was not already dead when the second strike occurred.
Declining the application for leave to appeal, the Supreme Court of New Zealand ruled that the Court of Appeal properly addressed the erroneous entry of a homicide conviction on the first count.
The Supreme Court emphasised that this case involved two distinct acts, not simultaneous actus rei. On the other hand, Filitonga and Mitchell concerned simultaneous actus rei, as the relevant acts occurred simultaneously. The Supreme Court explained that:
Regarding the appeal court’s finding that the verdict relating to the second charge was reasonable, the Supreme Court noted that the forensic pathologist’s acceptance of the possibility that the victim died before the second strike did not prevent the jury from ascertaining whether he was still alive at the time.
The Supreme Court found that the first verdict did not constitute a finding that the victim had passed away before the second strike. The Supreme Court added that the burden applicable to the verdicts was that both strikes together led to his death.
