Judge sets out cases in schoolboy murder trial
A JUDGE has addressed the jury in the final day of a trial of a young man accused of murdering a schoolboy.
Matthew Mason, 19, is charged with beating the Alex Rodda to death with a large metal tool in a woodland area near the village of Ashley, Cheshire, on December 12 last year.
Mr Mason, then 18, murdered the 15-year-old after they entered into a sexual relationship, the Crown alleges.
He paid Alex more than £2,000 over a three-week period after Alex allegedly threatened to reveal the relationship, jurors have been told.
Mr Mason ‘didn’t want anyone to know he was gay’, the jury has already heard.
Mr Gordon Cole QC, Mr Mason’s lawyer, earlier told the court that his client arranged a rendezvous with Alex to tell him the ‘blackmail had to stop’.
Yesterday, presiding
Judge Steven Everett gave the jurors directions regarding law and briefly summed up the prosecution and defence cases, before sending them home for the Christmas break.
He told the jury of their different roles in the case
– namely that he helps with matters of law, and they decide the verdict based on the evidence they have heard.
He added that cases such as this can give rise to emotions, but told jurors: “I remind you what I said at the start of this case - it’s not emotions you try this case on, but it’s on the evidence.”
Judge Everett went on to say that it is for the prosecution to prove Mr Mason’s guilt.
The judge told the jury that it’s the prosecution’s case that the murder was ‘premeditated’ and ‘preplanned’.
He said: “It’s alleged he participated in an unlawful sexual relationship with Alex Rodda that gave rise to demands for money from Alex, that he would disclose the details of the sexual relationship if he did not send him money. It is the prosecution’s case that the defendant decided he would put an end to this blackmail by disposing of Alex.”
Judge Everett said of the defence case that Alex had ‘taken advantage’ of the situation he was involved in with Matthew Mason and started to ‘blackmail’ him.
He said that Mr Mason said in evidence, that he intended to speak to Alex and ask him to stop, but Alex ‘became abusive and violent’ and so Mr Mason ‘hit Alex a number of times in self-defence’.
The trial will resume January 4.