British banker Rurik Jutting fails to overturn double murder conviction in Hong Kong court
He will continue serving mandatory life sentence at maximum security Stanley Prison for killing two Indonesian women in 2014
Rurik Jutting, the British banker jailed for life in Hong Kong for brutally murdering two Indonesian women, failed on Friday to overturn his convictions.
Clad in a blue shirt, the Cambridge graduate, who was sentenced in November in 2016, nodded after learning the result he had been awaiting for almost two months. Before the hearing started, Jutting was still smiling at the prison officers accompanying him when he asked for their assistance to get his lawyers’ attention.
The former banker can still appeal to the city’s highest court, the Court of Final Appeal, but Friday’s failure means he will continue serving his mandatory life sentence at the maximum security Stanley Prison on the south of Hong Kong Island – where the city keeps some of its most notorious criminals.
It is not clear if Jutting intends to appeal further, as his lawyers did not make any comments before leaving court.
Sitting in the Court of Appeal, Mr Justice Michael Lunn, Justice of Appeal Andrew Macrae and Court of First Instance judge Kevin Zervos rejected Jutting’s case that the judge at his first trial misdirected the jury.
In a 52-page judgment, Lunn, the vice-president of the appeal court, said most of the direction being challenged had been given after consultation with Jutting’s lawyers, but they had taken no issue with it.
“For the reasons set out in the judgment of the court ... the defendant’s application for leave to appeal was refused,” Lunn said in a brief court hearing as he broke the news to Jutting.
