Supreme Court jury finds bikie Joshua Roy Grant had murdered Mark Boyce during 2017 attack

A Supreme Court jury has unanimously found a man with bikie links guilty of a brutal bashing murder after previously admitting to manslaughter over the attack.

Mark Boyce died after a brutal attack in 2017. Picture: SA Police

A man standing trial over the brutal bashing murder of a victim who was “in the wrong place at the wrong time” has been found guilty of the crime.

A Supreme Court jury of four men and eight women took four and a half hours to unanimously find Joshua Roy Grant, 27, guilty of murdering Mark Boyce, 36.

Ahead of the trial, Grant — who police have previously alleged is a Hells Angels member — had pleaded guilty to manslaughter over the attack, but not guilty to murder.

The jury were not told of Grant’s bikie gang links.

Joshua Grant has been found guilty of the murder of Mark Boyce. Picture: Facebook

Outside court, Mr Boyce’s emotional father, Malcolm Boyce, said he was “very happy with the outcome” and praised the efforts of prosecutors and police over the past two years.

“To a certain extent we’ve got justice,” he said.

“He was my only son, only child, and besides being a son he was a good mate.”

Mr Boyce had stepped outside his Hill St, Elizabeth South, home about 10.40pm on January 30, 2017, to ask a man waiting outside for a lift, when another man got out of a different car and chased him down the street.

He was caught before prosecutors claimed that man and two others began “kicking, punching and stomping” on him in an attack lasting less than 20 seconds.

Opening the trial earlier this month, Emily Telfer SC, said Grant was one of those three men. She said they were looking for another man, their intended target, who cannot be named for legal reasons. That man was hiding on the roof and watched the attack unfold.

That man, who was a fugitive on the run from police at the time, told the jury he blamed himself every day for his best mate’s death.

“I knew what had happened … I blame myself every day for it … he took my spot, you know what I mean?,” he told the jury.

Mr Boyce suffered multiple injuries including a blunt force head injury which resulted in swelling on his brain.

He died just over a week later in the Royal Adelaide Hospital on February 8, 2017, after his life support was turned off.

Marie Shaw QC said witnesses had described only one of the three men involved had kicked Mr Boyce in the head, causing his fatal head injuries.

She said that man was wearing a white T-shirt and was not her client, who was distinguished by a cast on his arm in CCTV footage from an unrelated injury sustained about a week earlier.

“We challenge the Crown’s assertion that my client laid into the deceased,” she said.

“We say the CCTV footage does not show beyond reasonable doubt that that’s what’s going on.”

Grant will return to court for a pre-sentence hearing next month.