BRITAIN: The judge in the murder trial of Soham schoolgirls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells told jurors yesterday to put emotions to one side and judge the case on the evidence alone.
Judge Alan Moses started his summing up after the Old Bailey court heard a closing speech by Ms Maxine Carr's defence lawyer, who said the former teaching assistant lied to protect her former lover Mr Ian Huntley, an "incalculably evil" man.
Mr Huntley (29) has admitted conspiracy to pervert the course of justice but denies murdering the 10-year-olds.
"The judgements you must make on the evidence must be uninfluenced by emotions that cases such as this arouse," Judge Moses told the jurors. The judge said Huntley's description of how he dumped the bodies in a ditch in the countryside may have "appalled" the jury, but that emotions should play no part in its deliberations. Mr Huntley has admitted loading the girls' bodies into the boot of his car and driving them to a secluded spot about 15 miles from their Cambridgeshire village of Soham, rolling them down a steep bank, cutting their clothes off and burning their bodies.
"Whilst the families of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman searched that night for the lost girls, the defendant Ian Huntley started to destroy the evidence and left those girls in a ditch," the judge said.
"It is all too easy to say that a man who has behaved like that must be a murderer. . . Don't jump to that approach," Judge Moses told jurors. Mr Huntley has admitted that Holly died in the bathtub of the house he shared with Ms Carr after he tried to help her with a nosebleed.
He has told the court he killed Jessica when he covered her mouth with his hand to stop her screaming.
Judge Moses said that before the jury could convict Mr Huntley of murdering Jessica, it had to be sure that the prosecution had proved that her death had not been an accident and that he had intended to kill her, the judge said.
"If done with intention, then he is guilty of murder, Judge Moses told the jury. "If you're sure he killed her but not sure whether he intended to do so, he is guilty of manslaughter. If you conclude that Jessica's death was an accident, then he is not guilty." Ms Carr's defence lawyer, Mr Michael Hubbard, said she had gone through the "very painful process of realising just what sort of man" her former lover was.
"There is another side to Ian Huntley. A dark side, an evil side, an incalculably evil side if you think about it," Mr Hubbard said. "He has deceived just about everyone, even his own legal team." Mr Hubbard began his final speech by holding up a card that Holly Wells had given Ms Carr after finding out that she had failed to get a full-time job at her primary school.
"Don't leave us, don't go far," the card read. "These two little girls were very special to Maxine Carr and she was to them," Mr Hubbard told the court.
"It is almost preposterous to suggest that she realised what Huntley did and, having worked it out that he murdered or unlawfully killed them, she helped him."
Ms Carr (26) has described in court how she and Mr Huntley concocted a false story about the evening the girls died in August 2002.
Ms Carr is charged with assisting an offender and conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
Mr Hubbard said the jury should acquit Ms Carr of charges of assisting an offender because it was clear that she did not believe Mr Huntley had killed the girls. During the frantic search for the girls, Ms Carr told police and journalists she was in Soham with Mr Huntley when she was actually 100 miles away in Grimsby, Humberside, with her mother. - (Reuters)