High Court jury set to rule on gruesome killings of two Indonesians

A jury has started deliberating on the case of British investment banker Rurik Jutting who was on trial for murder at the Court of First Instance for killing two Indonesian women in 2014.

A verdict could come as early as Monday

Both the prosecutor and the defense finished summing up their arguments on Friday after nine days of trial, and Justice Michael Stuart-Moore instructed the jury to discuss the case and return a verdict.

In his closing speech, prosecutor John Reading urged the nine-man jury to return a guilty verdict for murder, saying that while Jutting may have lost control of himself due to abuse of cocaine and alcohol, “he acted rationally and calmly during the murders.”

The prosecutor told the jury comprising six men and three women that their sympathy should be with the families of the victims and not Jutting.

Reading spoke after the defense closed its arguments on the gruesome double murder case that shocked people in and outside reputedly safe Hong Kong.

According to Reading, the defendant showed he had the ability to form judgments and exercise self-control as he cut the throat of one of his victims.

During the trial, the jurors were shown Jutting’s iPhone video recordings of himself describing how he killed 23-year-old Sumarti Ningsih in his Wan Chai flat in November 2014 after torturing her for three days.

The woman’s body, with her head almost severed, was wrapped in a blanket and stashed in a suitcase found on the ledge of Jutting’s flat.

The body of his second victim, Seneng Mujiasih, 26, was found three days earlier.

In the video recording, Jutting showed the tools he used in the torture and killing that included a hammer, blowtorch, and pliers.

Reading said defense psychiatrist Dr Latham’s conclusion that Jutting had lost control due to his addiction to alcohol and cocaine, as well as his narcissistic personality disorder and sexual sadism, were not sufficient bases to downgrade the killings to manslaughter.

Reading said Jutting “wasn’t substantially impaired” as the defense claimed. He took cocaine to gain “dutch courage”, and looked and sounded calm in the videos, and even made an overseas call to his mother in Surrey, England, after the killings.

Jutting pleaded not guilty to murder at the opening of his trial on Oct. 24, but admitted  manslaughter due to an impaired sense of responsibility.”

His defense lawyer, barrister Tim Owen QC, told the court that Jutting had been in highly stressful jobs that caused him to gradually spiral out of control before the killings.

Owen described his client as feeling very stressed after he was involved in selling a financial product for Bank of America- Merrill Lynch that came under regulatory investigation in Britain in 2012.

At the time Jutting, a vice president and head of the bank’s Structured Equity Finance and Trading (Asia) for the bank, was asked by his boss to do something to protect the reputation of the bank, Owen said.

He said Jutting got emotional, often skipped work, and was eventually transferred to Hong Kong in 2013.

The case resumes at the High Court on Monday – Vir B. Lumicao