Jury considering verdict in Xue murder trial
12:05PM Friday Jun 19, 2009
The jury has retired to decide whether a man who abandoned his daughter in Melbourne is guilty of his wife's murder in Auckland.
Nai Yin Xue, 55, is on trial in the High Court at Auckland charged with murdering An An Liu, his 28-year-old wife, in 2007.
The all-woman jury retired just before midday after three weeks of evidence and submissions.
The Crown said Xue strangled Ms Liu with a neck tie, probably on September 11, 2007, before dumping her near-naked body in the boot of his Chinese Times car.
They say he fled to Melbourne two days later, then abandoned his three-year-old daughter Qian Xun in a Melbourne train station on September 15 before flying to the United States.
Xue's lawyer Chris Comeskey said Xue did not kill Ms Liu and that she may have died accidentally during a consensual sex act involving a tie.
He said Xue did not know his wife was dead when he left for Melbourne.
Summing up the trial, Justice Hugh Williams told the jury they could not assume Xue was guilty of murder because he abandoned Qian Xun in Melbourne.
"You can take that fact and surveillance footage in considering circumstantial evidence," he said.
"What you must not do is say no decent father would do that, therefore he's guilty. It's not a court of morals, it's a court of fact."