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11/12/01 - Sarah Payne jury retires
to consider verdict
By Paul Peachey
The Independent
The judge in the Sarah Payne murder trial sent the jury
to a hotel last night after telling them to show courage
while considering their verdicts. Summing up on the
17th day of the trial of Roy Whiting at Lewes Crown
Court, Mr Justice Curtis told the nine men and three
women not to "shrink from being decisive".
He said: "The life of a child is precious in the
eyes of the law and in the eyes of all of us respectful
citizens. Yet ... the rule of law of fair and even-handed
treatment to anyone accused of taking that life must
prevail.
"You must bring to this case a calm and dispassionate
mind. Deciding a case like this requires courage, I
know that. Do not shrink from being decisive."
Mr Justice Curtis asked the jury to decide if Roy Whiting,
42, an unemployed mechanic and labourer, had "tailored"
his evidence after the discovery of a fuel receipt in
his van "torpedoed" his initial story.
The receipt, from the Buck Barn garage near to where
the eight-year-old's body was found, was timed at about
10pm on 1 July, the night that Sarah was kidnapped.
When police visited his home a day later, Mr Whiting,
of Littlehampton, West Sussex, told them that he was
back at his flat by then, having driven straight home
after going to a funfair in Hove.
But in the witness box he said that he had taken a longer
route but had "forgotten" he had stopped for
fuel. The judge added that the jury had to decide why
Sarah was killed. "Having regard to the hurried
burial, the body's nakedness, all the circumstances
surrounding it, and the pathologist's evidence that
Sarah Payne met a violent death, is it a necessary and
proper deduction of all the pieces of evidence that
she was murdered for an abnormal sexual reason or to
cover up a sexual offence?"
Sarah, of Hersham, Surrey, was abducted from a lane
after playing with her brothers and sister in a cornfield
at East Preston, West Sussex, close to her grandparents'
home. She was found naked and half-buried in a shallow
grave in a field near Pulborough, West Sussex, 16 days
later. Mr Whiting denies kidnap and murder.
The jury will continue its deliberations today. |
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