From the Dom Post:

Police probe threat against juror
Saturday, 14 July 2007

Police are investigating an attempt to influence or intimidate a Wellington juror hearing the trial of skinheads accused of beating and robbing a Canadian tourist.

The juror was discharged from the case after reporting that he had found a note outside his house on Friday morning saying “Not guilty”, and marked with a swastika.

The case continued with 11 jurors and they were not told of the reason for the departure of the 12th till after they had delivered their verdicts late last night.

Justice Jill Mallon initially suppressed details of the note sent to the juror, but lifted the order when the case finished. The identity of the juror remains secret.

Detective Ben Quinn, the police officer in charge of the case, said attempts at juror intimidation were unusual in New Zealand but someone had obviously discovered where the man lived. An investigation had already begun into who left the note.

The jury found Jaydon Russell Borland, 31, guilty of causing grievous bodily harm with intent to rob, aggravated robbery and kidnapping. Jason George Gregory, 20, was found not guilty of causing grievous bodily harm but guilty of the other two charges.

Benjamin Peter McPadden, 19, who had spent the trial with a prison officer separating him from the others in the dock, was found guilty of kidnapping but not guilty of the other two charges. All were remanded to August 10 for sentencing. Borland and Gregory are in custody and McPadden is on bail.

A fourth man, Mark Alexander Gage, 31, was discharged earlier in the trial. He had spent 14 months in custody awaiting trial.

He told The Dominion Post he had lost everything while he was in prison and now had to rebuild his life, which would include finding out where his four children now were.

The tourist, Canadian native Jeremie Kawerninski, failed to return to New Zealand to give evidence at a depositions hearing but returned for the trial on condition his parents got a free trip back to support him.

He suffered at least one broken rib and a collapsed lung in the attack in April last year. He spent eight days in hospital.

Writing under the name Jeremie Little Wolf Kawerninski on anti-race hate website Fightdemback! last year, he said he wanted to “put these f . . . away”. He did not want them to get away and do more damage to anyone else. He had been “very nice” to the men who beat him and thought he was just drinking with new friends.

In court he said he had known Borland was a skinhead but did not judge people by their appearance. He accepted the offer of somewhere to sleep the night, but was beaten at a house in Naenae, Lower Hutt, robbed, hooded, bound and dumped from a car in an isolated area.