The lawyer for former Mongrel Mob prospect Mauha Fawcett says his client is “incredibly relieved and happy now that it’s over and that the High Court judge has dismissed the case”.
Fawcett, who is now 34, declined to speak to media outside court, but his defence lawyer Chris Stevenson told media: “As he said to me, I can finally sleep.”
Today, High Court Judge Justice Dunningham ordered the Crown to drop the charges against Fawcett, who was convicted of the murder of Christchurch sex worker Mellory Manning in 2014.
Manning was stabbed and strangled, and her body was found dumped in the Avon River in December 2008.
Fawcett’s conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal in 2017, but the reasons for that decision are suppressed. He was to be retried next year, but his lawyers challenged the use of interviews he had given police because he has fetal alcohol syndrome.
His lawyer said, “Mr Fawcett always maintained he had nothing to do with the really terrible and tragic killing of Mellory Manning”.
“His trial miscarried and he had around a decade of his life taken away from him,” he said.
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