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Twelve members of the jury will now decide the fate of Comanchero gang leader Pasilika Naufahu, her partner Connor Clausen and a name-suppressed person, after a four-week trial concluded in Auckland High Court this afternoon.
Pasilika Naufahu.
Photo: RNZ / Dan Cook
Naufahu and Clausen deny money laundering and conspire to supply pseudoephedrine, a class B drug, while the third person denies money laundering.
Last week, the case was abruptly reduced when two defendants had their charges largely dropped, with the total number of charges dropping from 11 to four and the number of people on trial dropping from five to three.
The case concluded this afternoon with the attorney representing Naufahu, Ron Mansfield, dismissing the Crown case as a theory, and his witnesses as “volatile” and “slippery.”
He said the jury had been unnecessarily “surrounded and suffocated” with paperwork that they now had to ignore.
“The relevant evidence, on the charges he faces, could have been heard within a week,” he said.
Mansfield said that the police had invested all possible resources to monitor Naufahu, after he made it known that he was the president of the Auckland chapter of the Comancheros.
But he claimed that the “seven or eight” undercover policemen who were following his client had not obtained direct evidence.
“They were looking for drugs, they were looking for cash, they were looking for anything they could find after the firing that would prove what they suspected: that this man was involved in New Zealand, or maybe overseas, in drug trafficking activities. Well, your research folks revealed just as much as that very diligent search of your home revealed: nothing, “he said.
Previously, the Crown subjected two witnesses to cross-examination, including one convicted on other charges, which it described as “the heart of the case.”
Mansfield dismissed that witness as “interested”; only interested in minimizing their own involvement.
“[He] “He was a false prophet who … pedaled so much snake oil that the Crown slipped, more than once, in the way that Pasilika Naufahu wanted to introduce him,” he said.
He urged the jurors to set aside their prejudices about Nuafahu when considering their verdicts.
“You could focus on the fact that he is president of the Comancheros … and you could, as a result, decide that you don’t like him. You would surely understand that that is wrong, contrary to your oaths in this trial.”
It was a message echoed by Judge Graham Lang, in his closing remarks to the jury, urging them to reach a unanimous verdict based on facts.
“You can’t look into someone’s mind. You have to look at all the surrounding circumstances, you have to be satisfied with what has been reliably established and draw reasonable and logical deductions based on the facts that have been established, and this is how. establish what is on someone’s mind. “
The jury was dismissed with a reminder from Judge Lang of his most important duty: to hold each defendant innocent until proven guilty.
