Man guilty of bashing homicide

Police are standing by their decision to press murder charges against young two men over the bashing death of Wellington journalist Phillip Cottrell despite one being found guilty of the lesser charge of homicide and the second acquitted.

Nicho Waipuka, 20, was adjudged guilty of homicide by a jury on Monday following two weeks of a murder trial in the High Court at Wellington.

His co-accused Manuel Robinson, 18, was cleared of both murder and homicide charges after the seven women and five men deliberated for more than six hours.

Waipuka will be sentenced in February, while Robinson was ushered from a court side entrance into a waiting vehicle, driven by a bandana-wearing man, soon after the verdict was delivered around 5pm.

Lawyers for Waipuka and Robinson didn't comment to waiting media outside the court. Nor did their family members, who had attended every day of the trial.

Police laid murder charges following the death of Mr Cottrell, who was attacked on December 10 last year while walking home from an overnight shift at Radio New Zealand.

He was found in his pooling blood in Boulcott Street and his skull had been fractured into 20 pieces.

The English-born journalist suffered from a brittle bone condition and he died from his brain injuries in hospital the next day.

Waipuka and Robinson were identified through security camera footage and picked up over the next few days.

Waipuka, who had taken $ 80 in cash and tried to use Mr Cottrell's credit card, admitted punching his victim once, but Robinson said he was on the other side of the road at the time.

More than 800 pages of evidence were presented at the trial and 68 witnesses called.

However, some of Robinson and Waipuka's associates recanted on the statements they had given to police.

The Crown argued Waipuka and Robinson had not deliberately murdered Mr Cottrell but despite knowing he could die, still attacked him, and that Robinson was at least party to the attack.

Detective Senior Sergeant Scott Miller told media outside court on Monday he was disappointed with the sole homicide verdict, but accepted the decision.

However, he didn't believe police should have accepted Waipuka's offer, in March, to plead guilty to the homicide charge if the murder allegation was dropped.

"I think with the investigation, the evidence we had, particularly around the admissions of both accused, it just needed to go to the jury."

Police had to arrest five or six witnesses to get them to appear during the trial, only to have them change their statements in the stand, which made it "complex", he said.

He didn't think an appeal was likely.

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