A British banker jailed for life for the murder of two Indonesian women at his upscale Hong Kong apartment in a cocaine-fueled rampage yesterday appealed his conviction.
Rurik Jutting tortured Sumarti Ningsih for three days — filming parts of her ordeal on his smartphone — 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.
Photo: AFP
Jutting 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.”
However, Jutting’s defense team yesterday argued that Judge Michael Stuart-Moore 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.
Defense lawyer Gerard McCoy argued 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. “The judge has wrongly and prescriptively directed the jury that they should look for disorders, because disorders are what is an abnormality of mind.”
The defense had argued that Jutting’s mental responsibility had been substantially affected by heavy alcohol and cocaine use, as well as sexual sadism and narcissistic personality disorders.
Not all four medical experts who testified agreed that Jutting’s behavior met the criteria for a “disorder” in all four areas, but they did all find that he was suffering from an abnormality of the mind, McCoy said.
In the 10-day trial in October and November last year, the jury heard how Jutting became obsessed with slavery, rape and torture, which he acted out on Ningsih.
The jury was forced to watch iPhone footage of parts of the attack, as well as Jutting’s own descriptions of how he had used pliers, sex toys and a belt during the killing.
The hearing is to continue today for prosecution arguments.
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