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Gang members acted 'above the law'
08.10.2004
Three men accused of murdering Highway 61 national president Kevin Weavers
considered themselves above and beyond the law, a prosecutor told a murder trial
yesterday.
In his closing address in the High Court at Auckland, Crown counsel Brian Dickey
said it must have seemed to the jury more like Los Angeles or Baghdad for people
to walk into a man's home in broad daylight and leave him dying.
But they had to consider the case against former Highway 61 chapter president
Kelly Robertson, life member Michael Gould and gang associate Michael Brittain
in the context of a community that had its own rules and considered itself above
the law.
Mr Dickey said Robertson and Gould had shown "macho arrogance" to walk into the
gang headquarters in Manurewa last September where Mr Weavers lived and attack
him in reprisal for a brutal attack by Mr Weavers on Brittain.
"These men consider themselves beyond the reach of the law ... but they are not,
they are not."
Mr Dickey said that what Mr Weavers did to Brittain, who was hospitalised after
being attacked with hammers, was inexcusable.
But it was grossly wrong to suggest that it was "okay if the person who dies is
a bad guy".
Mr Dickey said Mr Weavers was not above the law either, and he would have been
arrested if police had been told of his attack on Brittain and the theft of his
Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
He said the case had a simplicity: Brittain said he wanted Mr Weavers dead for
the assault on him and the next day Mr Weavers was killed when Robertson and
Gould went inside the gang pad while Brittain sat outside in a vehicle. It was a
"remarkable coincidence".
Robertson claimed that Mr Weavers attacked him with a knife when he raised the
issue of returning Brittain's bike.
The gang president was accidentally stabbed with his own blade in the thigh
during the ensuing struggle, Robertson told the court.
But Mr Dickey said the combination of coincidence and accident was nonsense.
He maintained that an accidental stabbing was not physically possible, given the
nature of the injury.
Mr Weavers died from massive blood loss from a "cynical and gruesome" 22cm wound
to his thigh that cut his femoral artery in two places.
Mr Dickey said that if the attacker, and anyone who helped, knew it could cause
death, that was murder.
Robertson's and Gould's actions in leaving the stricken Mr Weavers without
helping him spoke volumes.
The charges
The accused: Kelly Raymond Robertson, 45, Michael Douglas Gould, 54, and Michael
William Brittain, 44.
The charge: All three are charged with the murder of Highway 61 leader Kevin
Paul Weavers in September last year.
