The Star Malaysia

British double killer appeals guilty verdict

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HONG KONG: A British banker, jailed for life for the horrifying murder of two Indonesian women at his upscale Hong Kong apartment in a cocaine-fuelled rampage, has appealed against his conviction.

Cambridge University graduate Rurik Jutting tortured Sumarti Ningsih for three days, filming parts of her ordeal on his phone, before slashing her throat with a serrated knife and stuffing her body into a suitcase.

Days later and with Ningsih’s corpse on his balcony, the former Bank of America worker picked up Seneng Mujiasih, intending to play out the same fantasies. He killed her when she started screaming.

Jutting, now 32, had pleaded guilty to manslaught­er on the grounds of diminished responsibi­lity but was found guilty of murder, with the judge at the time describing the killings as “sickening in the extreme”.

But Jutting’s defence team argued yesterday that Judge Michael StuartMoor­e had repeatedly given wrong directions to the jury during the trial last year when explaining how they should determine whether his state of mind had impaired his responsibi­lity for his actions.

Defence lawyer Gerard McCoy argued that the judge had wrongly told the jury to look for mental “disorders” rather than the broader spectrum of “abnormalit­y of the mind”.

“Abnormalit­y of mind need not be a disorder,” McCoy told the court yesterday.

“The judge has wrongly and prescripti­vely directed the jury to look for disorders because disorders are what is an abnormalit­y of mind.”

The defence team had argued during the trial that Jutting’s mental responsibi­lity had been substantia­lly affected by heavy alcohol and cocaine use, as well as sexual sadism and narcissist­ic personalit­y disorder.

Not all four medical experts who testified agreed that Jutting’s behaviour met the criteria for a “disor-

der” in all four areas, said McCoy.

But they did all find that Jutting was suffering from an abnormalit­y of mind as he had impaired mental functionin­g, he added.

“The ground of appeal is the judge wrongly directed the jury as to the true meaning of abnormalit­y of the mind,” McCoy argued.

“All four experts agreed that there were four concurrent abnormalit­ies of the mind. That’s what the jury should have been asked: Did those four functionin­gs constitute an abnormalit­y of the mind?”

At the end of the trial last year, Stuart-Moore said Jutting had known what he was doing and described him as an “archetypal sexual predator” who presented an extreme danger to women. — AFP

 ??  ?? Violent murder: A file photo of a migrant worker holding up photos of Jutting’s (inset) victims outside the High Court in Hong Kong. — AFP
Violent murder: A file photo of a migrant worker holding up photos of Jutting’s (inset) victims outside the High Court in Hong Kong. — AFP
 ?? trial. —AFP ?? Bloody proof: A file photo of the murder weapon used as evidence in the
trial. —AFP Bloody proof: A file photo of the murder weapon used as evidence in the

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