A Hong Kong jury began its deliberations on Tuesday in the trial of British banker Rurik Jutting who has denied murder charges over the killings of two Indonesian women.
Jutting, 31, a former securities trader and Cambridge graduate, pleaded not guilty to murdering Sumarti Ningsih and Seneng Mujiasih two years ago on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
He pleaded guilty to manslaughter, but that was rejected by the prosecution.
During the 10-day trial jurors watched horrific footage of Jutting torturing Ningsih in his upscale apartment where he kept her captive for three days before slashing her throat in his bathroom and stuffing her body into a suitcase which he stored on his balcony.
Days later he murdered Mujiasih, slashing her throat in his living room.
Both women were in their 20s and had gone to Jutting’s apartment after he offered them money for sex.
Jutting’s defence argued that his control had been impaired by his heavy use of cocaine and alcohol, combined with narcissistic personality and sexual sadism disorders.
But the prosecution argued he had been able to make controlled decisions.
Judge Michael Stuart-Moore urged the jury to use their “common sense” and life experience on Tuesday before they were sent to deliberate.
“You can use that experience, applying it to the facts of the case, which was anything but ordinary,” he said.
He encouraged them to reach a unanimous verdict, and said only a majority of 7-2 or more would be accepted.
In his summing up on Monday, Stuart-Moore asked the jury to set aside the dreadfulness of the crimes and focus instead on whether Jutting’s mental responsibility had been impaired, local media reported.
The trial heard how Jutting was a loner, with no friends, who drank, took cocaine, binged on takeaway food and developed an appetite for slavery, rape and torture.
A former employee of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, he had started to take drugs and use prostitutes before he arrived in Hong Kong in 2013, but in the weeks before the killings his cocaine use and promiscuity escalated.
Jutting would face a mandatory life sentence if convicted of murder.
