Trial begins for Auckland woman Margaret Green who killed partner Selwyn Robson

Warning: this story contains descriptions of violence that some may find disturbing.

“I f***ed up,” a woman accused of murder told her friend when she showed up on their doorstep with her partner’s blood spattered across her face like freckles.

In the hours after Margaret Jovander Green stabbed her partner Selwyn Robson, the Crown says she visited nearby friends and whānau alluding to what she had done.

Green, 33, is on trial in the High Court at Auckland charged with murdering Robson in May 2025 in the South Auckland sleepout they shared.

In her opening argument this morning, Crown lawyer Aysser Al-Janabi told the jury what Green said to her friends and family about what happened on the day of the alleged murder.

Defence lawyer Emma Priest said her client had stabbed Robson, a “violent” patched member of the Black Power gang but it was in self-defence.

Robson lived in a sleepout on a large property in Manurewa, South Auckland, and Green was staying with him.

The court heard there had been “some occasions” in the past where Robson had been violent to his partner.

On the morning of May 6, the couple, who had been in a “volatile” relationship for about five months, got into an argument.

Al-Janabi said the argument resumed about 9am and became physical. At some point, she said Green grabbed a kitchen knife and plunged it into her partner’s neck.

The knife went “almost” 10cm into his neck, penetrating his chest area, and he began to bleed heavily.

Al-Janabi said they both broke out of the sleepout and Green threw the knife among the equipment of her partner’s makeshift gym, while Robson went to the main house on the property to get help.

The occupants of the house remembered Robson saying something like “the fucking b**** did this” while they attempted to stop the bleeding and called 111.

They tried to keep the man talking but his condition was deteriorating and when the ambulance arrived, the first responders attempted to give him a blood transfusion and opened his chest.

All of this was to “no end”, Al-Janabi said, as Robson’s heart stopped and he died at the scene.

The lawyer then returned to the subject of Green, who by then had left the sleepout and gone to see friends and family nearby, slowly divulging what had happened.

First, she went to close family friend Sharon Manaia’s house. Manaia shared family names with Green so the woman called her “namesake”.

“Namesake, I’ve f***ed up,” the lawyer said Green confessed to Manaia.

Manaia described Green’s face as having a blood spatter that looked like freckles, Al-Janabi said.

Manaia told her to shower and went out to get groceries, and the woman was gone by the time she returned.

Green then went to a friend’s house, where people were gathered, and told her cousin Jessica Tahere that Robson “shouldn’t have talked to her like her dad”.

She also claimed to have given her partner a “hiding” the other week.

Al-Janabi said Green told another friend at the gathering she had “f***ed up” and “flipped her switch”. She also allegedly told another relative that Robson had kicked her in the head, so she stabbed him in the throat.

Al-Janabi told the court Green was back at Manaia’s house the day after the stabbing and her friend convinced her to hand herself in to police.

This was where Al-Janabi said Green told “a number of different police officers a number of different things”.

She clutched her shoulder as if it was painful, claimed to one officer her partner had given her a hiding and told another he had hurt her shoulder and arm.

The Crown and defence were in agreement on the fact Green’s actions had killed her partner, but Al-Janabi said it was not in self-defence.

She said a medical examination carried out on Green the day after Robson’s death showed no cuts to her body, meaning her violence in response to any assault was “excessive”.

She also said Green had “gambled with” Robson’s life by stabbing him.

“The Crown says that when Ms Green stabbed Mr Robson ... [she] either intended to kill him or she knew this was an act that could well kill him.”

In taking the risk to stab her partner, Green had committed murder, Al-Janabi concluded.

Finally, the Crown lawyer addressed any “prejudices and sympathies” that might come up during the trial and asked the jury to put them aside.

She said while Robson’s serious wound could trigger an emotional response, so could the dead victim’s history of violence towards Green and another former partner, as well as his gang ties.

She asked the jury not to judge Robson’s character during that evidence.

Defence asks: ‘What was life like for Ms Green?’

In her opening argument, Priest said it was up to the Crown to prove her client was not acting in self-defence against Robson.

She said there was no dispute the man had been violent, and she asked that the jury consider what the “reality” was like between the couple.

“What was life like for Ms Green?” she asked. “What happened that day?”

Green didn’t know and didn’t foresee that in “swinging” at her partner with the knife she would seriously harm him, she said.

She also asked the jury not to pre-judge her client before they had heard all the evidence.

The trial continues.

Ella Scott-Fleming has been a journalist for three years and previously worked at the Otago Daily Times, Gore Ensign and Metro Magazine. She has an interest in court and general reporting. She’s currently based in Auckland covering justice-related stories.