Jury considering prostitute murder case

A High Court jury is considering whether 31-year-old Jule Patrick Burns strangled a prostitute, Susan Sutherland, last April and left her naked body in an empty section in central Christchurch.

Justice John Hanson took 50 minutes to sum up in the two-week murder trial this morning, before the jury retired to consider its verdict at 11am.

He told the jury it was particularly important that they set aside sympathy and prejudice in the case because the trial had shown them an unsavoury world of prostitution and drug use. "It is a world most people will never experience."

The defence case for Burns is that he had sex with Miss Sutherland earlier that night -- which explained his DNA being found at the scene -- but he was at a nightclub in the city at the time of the murder.

"The defence case is that this was a woman with many enemies, and drug debts," said Justice Hanson.

But he said the Crown case was that the evidence -- including marks on her legs, and her nakedness -- pointed to this being a sexual assault "and a sexual encounter with a client that for some reason went wrong".

There had been no witnesses to the killing, and the Crown had called 70 witnesses to establish its circumstantial case. But he said the jury should not take the view that there was anything dubious or second rate about evidence because it was circumstantial.

- NZPA