Soham jurors told to ‘ignore emotion’ when reaching verdict
Mr Justice Moses told the jury which is due to be sent out today that it was "idle to pretend" that the deaths of the 10-year-olds did not provoke an emotional response.
He said: "The judgment you make is a judgment you must make on the evidence, uninfluenced by the emotion that a case such as this inevitably arouses. It is idle to pretend this is not a tragic case."
He gave an example, saying: "While 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.
"I only mention that because it is part of the case that it is bound to create an emotional reaction and any emotional reaction to the events cannot and must not influence your verdict."
The judge told the jury of seven women and five men that they alone were the judges of the facts in the case. He said: "You decide where the truth lies. No more and no less is required of you. Do not be overawed by the gravity of the allegation."
The judge began his address to the jury on the 26th day of the trial, after lawyers for co-defendants Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr finished their closing speeches. The jury has been told it will be sent out to begin to consider its verdicts today, once the judge has completed his summing-up.
Mr Justice Moses said the burden of proof lay entirely with the prosecution. "The prosecution must satisfy you so you feel sure of guilt...you must be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt."
In the case of Huntley, the judge said the jury could return verdicts of murder or manslaughter on either or both girls, of manslaughter by gross negligence in the case of Holly, or find him not guilty of killing either girl. He said that Huntley's lies after the deaths could not be taken as proof that he murdered the girls, saying it was "pretty inevitable" that he had to continue to lie once he had decided to try to hide the fact they had died in his home.
He said the jurors should only consider Huntley's lies and deceitful behaviour as evidence against him if they were sure they were the actions of a man trying to cover up murder.
The jury heard they were entitled to consider whether Huntley's behaviour in the following days had gone beyond what was needed for the cover-up.
He reminded the jury that Huntley's description of how he came to dispose of the bodies "may have appalled you but remember, emotion can play no part in your deliberations".
Mr Justice Moses said the jurors would need to consider that Huntley was a man of previous good character, in that he had never been accused of a similar offence before, and said they must ignore the fact that he was previously accused of rape, as the case was later dropped at court.
He then turned to the charges against Carr. The fact she lied and concealed knowledge the girls were ever inside the house was not necessarily evidence she knew or believed Huntley had killed them, he said.
However, he said: "If you are sure she helped clean up the house, not just because she was an obsessive cleaner, but to conceal evidence, the matter might be different."
Huntley, 29, a former caretaker at Soham Village College, denies murdering the 10-year-olds on Sunday August 4 last year but has admitted a single charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
The jury heard he admits Holly died accidentally in his bath and that he killed Jessica as he tried to silence her screams, although he insists he did not mean to kill her.
His ex-girlfriend Carr, 26, a former classroom assistant in the youngsters' class, denies conspiring to pervert the course of justice and two counts of assisting an offender.
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