Defence lawyer Steve Gill. Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii
A psychiatrist has told a High Court jury the man accused of lighting the fatal Loafers Lodge fire was insane at the time and had no intention of hurting anyone.
The defence has opened its case during the trial of a 50-year-old man who has denied murdering five people by setting the Wellington boarding house alight on 16 May, 2023.
Lawyer Steve Gill told the jury at the High Court in Wellington the man is not playing "the insanity card" but was genuinely insane when he set the building alight.
"It was a very insane thing to do, actually," he said.
Gill reminded the jury of the defendant's "lifelong" history of mental illness.
The court has previously heard the man has schizophrenia, was hospitalised eight times between 2001 and 2023 and had fled an Auckland mental health facility weeks before lighting the fatal blaze.
As a communal living facility, Loafers Lodge was the worst place for someone who believed people were out to get him, Gill said.
"He's hearing voices, they're telling him things, they're threatening him and so on, and he just gets worse."
Ultimately it was the jury's job to decide whether the man was insane at the time, and the evidence that had already been presented in court would help them form their conclusion, Gill said.
"There's no machine that can be operated to show what's going on in the defendant's head at the time, but you've got the second best option here, and that is the CCTV footage."
Gill said the footage of the man's movements during his tenancy at Loafers Lodge, including on the night of the fire, showed his mental health deteriorated to such an extent that he no longer knew the difference between right and wrong.
Defendant experienced serious psychotic relapse - psychiatrist
The defence's first witness, psychiatrist Dr Krishna Pillai, believed the man was insane when he lit the fire, and was experiencing a serious psychotic relapse.
Pillai told the court the man's hallucinations - hearing voices telling him to light the fire - rendered him incapable of knowing lighting the fire was morally wrong, which is a threshold required for an insanity defence.
"[The defendant] believed that individuals at Loafers Lodge were targeting him for intimidation purposes at that time, but he also feared that he was to be harmed," Pillai said.
"By lighting the fire, [the defendant] has stated that his intention was to scare the individuals who were intimidating him, to make the intimidation cease."
Photo: Pool
The defendant said he did not want to harm them, Pillai said.
He added that the way the man started the blaze - by gathering materials, putting them into a cupboard and setting them alight - was haphazard and unplanned, which showed impaired judgement.
The CCTV footage of the man's movements during his week-long tenancy at Loafers Lodge - including the night of the fire - was also an indication that his mental state was declining.
"There is sort of an escalation crescendo of ... levels of agitation as marked by him pounding up and down corridors and in and out of the building," Pillai said.
There was a "clear link" between the offending and the defendant's mental state, Pillai said, citing persistent themes of persecution, the man feeling like people were against him, and that he was at risk.
"It all hangs together in a story for me, that actually, he was quite profoundly affected by the mental illness to the point that he was driven to this behaviour."
Earlier in the trial, another psychiatrist Dr Justin Barry-Walsh told the court on balance, there was "too much doubt" that the defendant did not know lighting the fires was wrong.
