British banker Rurik Jutting today launched an appeal against his conviction for the horrific murder of two Indonesian women at his luxury Wan Chai flat in 2014, with his lawyers arguing the trial judge had misdirected jurors and served a “fatal” blow to his defense.
Jutting, 32, tortured Sumarti Ningsih during a three-day drug fueled rampage before slashing her throat with a serrated knife and stuffing her body into a suitcase.
With Ningsih’s corpse on his balcony, the former Bank of America worker, just days later, picked up Seneng Mujiasih, intending to play out the same fantasies and killed her when she started screaming.
During the trial, Rurik, once a high-flying securities trader, admitted killing the women but pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
His defense team claimed heavy drug and alcohol usage and sexual sadism and narcissistic personality disorders had impaired his responsibility.
However, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison, with trial judge Michael Stuart-Moore calling the killings “sickening in the extreme and beyond a normal person’s imagination.”
Today, defense lawyer Gerard McCoy argued that judge Stuart-Moore had made an “extremely serious error” by directing jurors to take a “narrow” view of “abnormality of mind,” which is grounds for diminished responsibility.
Four experts concluded during the trial that Jutting had an abnormality of mind because of impaired mental functioning, McCoy said.
Not all of the experts agreed that Jutting met the criteria of having a “disorder” in all of the categories, though McCoy noted experts said Jutting displayed “characteristics” of sexual sadism and narcissistic personality disorders.
Because of what he claimed were “erroneous” legal instructions, McCoy said that jurors were made to consider whether Jutting had mental disorders rather than decide whether his traits were sufficient to constitute “abnormality of mind” and thus diminished responsibility.
“The ground of appeal is that the judge wrongly directed the jury as to the true meaning of abnormality of the mind,” McCoy said.
“What is to the point is that any abnormal functioning is by definition an abnormality of the mind.”
Jutting sat in the dock this morning, dressed in a blue shirt and wearing dark-rimmed glassed. He took notes and referred to case documents he had brought.
In the grueling 10-day trial last October and November, the jury heard how Jutting became obsessed with slavery, rape and torture — fantasies he acted out on his first victim, Ningsih.
The jury was forced to watch iPhone footage of parts of the attack as well as Jutting’s own self-recorded descriptions of how he had used pliers, sex toys and a belt during the killing.
The hearing continues.
With AFP
