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Whanganui Black Power president Damien Shane Kuru lost an appeal against a manslaughter conviction. (File photo)
A Whanganui gang leader has lost his appeal against a manslaughter conviction for his role in the shooting of a gang rival living in the wrong part of town.
Kevin Neihana Ratana, known as Kastro, was shot dead at his new partner’s house in the Castlecliff area of Whanganui on August 21, 2018.
The area, “the Cliff”, was commonly considered Black Power territory, and Ratana, 27, was a member of the Mongrel Mob.
After a series of incidents Black Power members went to the house where Ratana was staying with his partner about 9.30am on a Tuesday, yelling threats and demanding he leave the area.
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When some of them started attacking Ratana’s car he stepped out of the house carrying a firearm. A shot was fired from the Black Power side, killing him on the spot.
Damien Shane Kuru, 43, was president of the Whanganui chapter of the Black Power. He was found guilty of being party to manslaughter and was sentenced to five years and two months’ jail.
He appealed against his conviction. In a decision issued on Friday, the Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal. However, in a dissenting decision, one member of the three-judge court said the conviction was unsafe.
Kuru had not been at the scene of the shooting but was in the general area. The Crown had said that as president of that chapter he must have known of the plan and approved. To support the proposition a police officer told the jury about the way New Zealand gangs worked.
Supplied
Mongrel Mob member Kevin Ratana, 27, had a relationship with a woman living in Black Power territory. (File photo)
Kuru said he had been walking to a meeting at a local school and heard shots.
At the appeal hearing his lawyer said it was unreasonable for the jury to have found him guilty, but a majority of the judges disagreed.
Two judges, Justice David Collins and Justice Matthew Muir, said the jury could have drawn reasonable inferences from the evidence leading to the guilty verdict. They accepted that the police officer who gave expert evidence about gangs in New Zealand was qualified to do that.
The officer’s evidence was generalised enough not to have told the jury that Kuru must have known what was planned and approved, and so he had not answered the ultimate question for the jury, they said.
The trial judge had given the jury directions about how to treat the police officer’s evidence, that counterbalanced the “robustness” of the prosecutor’s approach, the majority said.
The third judge, Justice Helen Cull, said the police officer was correctly allowed to give the evidence he did but she thought it led the jury into wrongly reasoning about what Kuru knew, and so they reached an unreasonable verdict.
There was no direct evidence that Kuru knew of the common plan and took part.
The police officer’s evidence – that Kuru would likely have known and sanctioned a gang attack – filled the gap in the Crown’s case, the judge said.
The prosecutor’s colourful language invited the jury to engage in “war-like” speculation about Kuru’s role. The circumstances raised the risk of reasoning in a way that was not permissible or was “bad person” prejudice.
She said the jury could not have been reasonably satisfied that Kuru was guilty and the conviction was unsafe.
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