By Jack McGregor
A MAN found guilty of murdering a British backpacker has appealed against his conviction and punishment.
A jury in New Zealand convicted the man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, of strangling Grace Millane on her 22nd birthday in December 2018 after they met via Tinder.
Miss Millane went out for drinks with him before returning to his hotel apartment in central Auckland, where he killed her.
He stuffed her body into a suitcase, drove to a forest and buried it in a shallow grave, where police found it
a week later.
Prosecutors argued in the trial that the man deliberately strangled Miss Millane to death, while defence lawyers claimed the death was accidental after the pair engaged in consensual erotic choking that went too far.
The jury found the man guilty and
a judge sentenced him to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years.
After he was sentenced in February, Ms Millane’s mother Gillian told the killer she was “absolutely heartbroken that you have taken my daughter’s future and robbed us of so many memories that we were going to create”.
Defence lawyer Rachael Reed, QC, reportedly told the appeal hearing:
“I do not in any way seek to condone or excuse his actions after Miss Millane’s death. I cannot and will not do so – they are inexcusable.”
According to the New Zealand Herald, she argued the jury should have had more direction around consent issues and “more balanced” direction on the expert evidence, and said the sentence was “manifestly unjust”.
Ms Reed told the Court of Appeal judges she was not seeking to excuse the man’s “abhorrent” actions after Miss Millane’s death, according to news organisation Stuff.
But she said the judge placed too much weight on those actions in determining the man’s sentence.
Ms Reed also said the conviction had problems, including questions around the issue of consent, some of the expert evidence, and negative evidence given by other women about the man’s character.
Ms Millane, from Wickford, Essex, was in Auckland as part of a round-the-world trip.
What had started out as a missing person inquiry in December 2018 when she failed to respond to 22nd birthday messages swiftly turned into a murder investigation.
Ms Millane met the man who would go on to murder her through a dating app and hit it off with him immediately. CCTV footage showed the pair laughing and kissing. It showed she trusted him.
Within days of her disappearance, police had identified a suspect, spoken to him and, unbeknown to the killer, tracked his movements by trawling through CCTV evidence.
Before long police found Ms Millane’s body, which he had stuffed into a suitcase and buried in the mountainous Waitakere Ranges. There followed an outpouring of grief from a small nation unused to such crimes.
After three weeks of evidence, hundreds of hours of police work and a year of grief, 12 jurors agreed that the 27-year-old had murdered Ms Millane.
The appeal court has reserved
its decision.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here