Rurik Jutting’s defence team slams judge for misleading jury as banker begins appeal against double murder conviction

Rurik Jutting, the British banker jailed for life for the gruesome killings of two Indonesian women in Hong Kong, was back in court on Tuesday to appeal his murder conviction, with his lawyers attacking the conduct of the judge at his original trial.

If the appeal is successful, his convictions will be quashed opening up doors for different scenarios including a retrial.

Gerard McCoy SC, Jutting’s new barrister, told the court that two crucial actions by presiding judge Michael Stuart-Moore had misled the jury, causing them to convict his client of murder.

The first had to do with the state of Jutting’s mind at the time of the killings. Jutting admitted to killing the two women but his lawyers at the first trial last year argued that he was not guilty of murder because of an “abnormality of the mind” that impeded his judgment, claiming “diminished responsibility”.

By law, diminished responsibility is an impaired mental state which is considered to make a person less answerable for murder and can be grounds to reduce the charge to manslaughter.