Sarah jury consider verdict

Jurors in the Sarah Payne murder trial have been sent to a hotel for the night after failing to reach a decision this afternoon. The judge earlier told them to act with courage but with calm and dispassionate minds.

The judge, Mr Justice Curtis told them: "Deciding a case like this requires courage, I know - don't shrink from being decisive.

"You have probably never come across a case like this in your life. Unfortunately I have. You must bring to this case a calm and dispassionate mind and act on the evidence that has been presented to you."

Roy Whiting, 42, a part-time labourer and mechanic from Littlehampton, West Sussex, denies abducting and murdering eight-year-old Sarah in July last year.

Watched by Sarah's parents, Sara and Michael Payne, the judge said: "The life of a child is precious in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of all respectable citizens. Yet when a child has lost his or her life, the rule of law is that fair and even-handed treatment for anyone accused of taking that life must prevail."

On the 17th day of the trial at Lewes Crown Court in East Sussex, he instructed the nine-man, three-woman panel to "steer a straight course and bring your commonsense to the evidence", adding: "Do not attempt to speculate on what you may have heard but have not heard. You decide the case on the whole of what has been put in front of you.

"There is no doubt that someone abducted Sarah Payne and then killed her and buried her in that shallow grave just off the A29." We live in an "imperfect world" said the judge, and there were bound to be some "loose ends" but the jury should disregard them if they believed them to be unimportant to the issues as a whole.

He told the panel his summing-up would be brief because "nobody disputes that Sarah Payne was indeed abducted and later killed. The question to you is: has the Crown proved this man was responsible and in particular when he killed her, if he indeed did kill her, did he intend to do so or cause her really serious bodily harm?"

If the jury do not reach a verdict tonight, they will return tomorrow to continue their deliberations.

Sarah disappeared from a quiet country lane after playing with her two brothers and sister in a cornfield at Kingston Gorse, near Littlehampton.

Her body was discovered 16 days after her disappearance, about 20 miles away in a field off the A29 near Pulborough, following a massive police hunt. Her brother Lee, then aged 13, has told how he saw a "dirty, scruffy" man with yellowish teeth drive off in a white van, grinning and waving at him, from the spot where Sarah vanished.

Whiting has told the court he had nothing to do with what happened to Sarah and had been sitting on a park bench in Hove 25 miles away at the time she went missing.

The case continues.