The Supreme Court has dismissed the appeal application of a hitchhiker who murdered a gay man he claims made sexual advances towards him. In 2002, Jason Mark Ferguson was convicted of the murder 56-year-old John Eric Sorrenson. He attacked Mr Sorrenson in his home in Mamaku, near Rotorua, after being given a lift from Putaruru and invited to stay the weekend. Ferguson claimed he was drying himself after a shower when Mr Sorrenson came into the bathroom and grabbed his genitals. The then 20-year-old bashed Mr Sorrenson over the head with household items, including a brass fireplace stand and coal shovel. He then stabbed the IHC caregiver in the back five times with kitchen knives. His defence counsel said the incident brought back a past memory of sexual abuse and caused Ferguson to lose his self-control, however jurors rejected Ferguson's defence of provocation and he was found guilty of murder. He was jailed for ten years in 2003. An appeal against his conviction was denied by the Court of Appeal in February and has since been taken to the Supreme Court. The appeal was chiefly on the grounds that Ferguson was not fit to stand trial because he suffered an intellectual disability and was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. The Supreme Court has dismissed this, saying a doctor ruled him fit to stand trial at the time and his former defence lawyer, who has since died, appeared to have had no issues with this. The court has also dismissed a claim his videotaped statement to police was unreliable and should not have been admitted. Ferguson's defence further submitted that evidence of his intellectual disability and mental disorder was relevant to the defence of provocation and should have been put forward by his 2002 defence team. "However, as the Court of Appeal observed, the claimed special characteristic was extreme sensitivity to homosexual advances; expert evidence on why that was so would have added little because the issue was whether, and not why, the applicant had that characteristic," the Supreme Court ruling reads. "A defence of lack of murderous intent, to which such evidence is also said to be relevant, was not run. That was obviously a tactical decision on the part of defence counsel who, rightly, must have taken the view that it would never succeed and would conflict with the defence of provocation." The Supreme Court also described as "patently untenable" and "quite novel", the defence claim that Ferguson should have had a medically trained 'interpreter' during the trial, not due to language difficulties, but to explain the trial to him from a medical perspective.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Thursday, 29th July 2010 - 2:44pm