Measured in approach. Resolute in advocacy.

Connor acted as part of the defence team for a parent whose identity remains suppressed. The client stood trial in the High Court at Whangārei after being accused of attempting to murder their disabled daughter during an alleged family murder-suicide attempt.

The Crown alleged that the client had given the daughter medication intending to kill her. The defence challenged whether the evidence established both an intention to kill and an act sufficiently connected to the alleged offence, including whether the amount of medication could have caused death.

Following the jury trial, the client was cleared of attempted murder. The client remains identified only as B to preserve the suppression orders and the privacy of the daughter and wider family.

Shannon Brady stood trial in the High Court at Whangārei charged with murdering fellow Waimamaku local Nicholas Baldwin, who died after being hit by Brady’s ute on State Highway 12 on 1 August 2024. The Crown alleged that Brady deliberately ran Baldwin down following an escalating dispute between the two men.

Acting for Brady alongside lead counsel Jasper Rhoades, with investigative support from Mike Sabin PI, Connor helped develop the defence case around what had occurred in the hours before the collision. The defence located and called multiple Waimamaku locals who had encountered Baldwin on the road shortly before he was struck, including witnesses who described him lunging at and throwing gang signs at passing vehicles.

That evidence, assembled and presented in the final days of trial, undercut the Crown’s case for murderous intent. After a three-week trial, the jury acquitted Brady of murder.

Connor defended a client charged with sexual violation offences involving two complainants following a jury trial in the Kaikohe District Court. Names have been withheld because there is no media coverage and the matter raises significant privacy considerations.

The Crown case relied heavily on the credibility and reliability of the complainants’ accounts. The defence tested that evidence against contemporaneous phone and text data, including communications with third parties in the days surrounding the alleged offending. Cross-examination exposed inconsistencies and implausibilities in the evidence and conduct that was difficult to reconcile with the accounts later given to Police.

The defence closing emphasised that the burden of proof rests with the Crown throughout and that the jury’s task was to test the evidence rather than accept an account simply because a complaint had been made. Following trial, the jury returned not guilty verdicts on all charges.

Connor defended a client charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm following a confrontation at a private property. The defence case was that the client had attended intending to clear the air after a heated text exchange, but was grabbed by the throat and pinned against a vehicle and was forced to fight free.

The case turned on self-defence and on the credibility and reliability of the Crown’s key witnesses. Cross-examination exposed significant inconsistencies in the complainant’s account, including an evolving explanation for a threatening text message, unreliable answers about the sequence of events, and evidence about coercive behaviour that was contradicted by another witness.

A brief video clip taken inadvertently by a family member contradicted a Crown witness’s account of the client’s demeanour and proved important to the defence case. The defence also highlighted the absence of forensic follow-up by Police despite an evidential gap that left the jury unable to be sure of the Crown’s version of events.

Although the client had initially provided a false alibi, it was retracted and the client’s presence at the scene was admitted well before trial. Following trial, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.