A Malaysian professor, who had been accused of murdering his wife and daughter, will not testify in his own defence.
On Thursday, Gerard McCoy SC, who represents Khaw Kim Sun, told the High Court about the decision of his client for calling his first defence witness, Nicholas Buckley - an Australia professor who specializes in pharmacology.
Khaw denied two counts of murder, the prosecutors said. The Malaysian professor allegedly killed his wife, Wong Siew Fing, 47, and daughter Lily Khaw Li Ling, 16 after filling a yoga ball with carbon monoxide. The two were found dead inside his wife's yellow Mini Cooper on May 22, 2015.
On Tuesday, his lawyer said at the murder trial that his client was with 250 students the day his wife and daughter were found dead. Khaw attended a university event at 1:30 pm just two hours before a passer-by found his wife and daughter unresponsive in the car.
The barrister cited an email from Khaw, a specialist in anesthesiology, and his colleagues, saying 255 third-year medical students presented projects during the event.
The evidence had been presented as McCoy cross-examined Gavin Joynt, Khaw's supervisor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. However, Joynt said he was unsure whether Khaw was present at the session that day because he had not attended the event himself.
According to the South China Morning Post, the prosecution ended the case after a medical scientist suggests Khaw broke ethical rules while experimenting on rabbits with carbon monoxide. The prosecutors also put a succession of doctors to support that the experiment of Khaw had no clinical value, and it was actually a trick commit the crime.
On Wednesday, Michael Irwin, who is the head of the University of Hong Kong's Department of Anaesthesiology, said to the court that the anesthesia specialist failed to get permission before conducting experiments on rabbits.
However, on Thursday, McCoy said the rabbits used by his client came from a sister department after they had finished with them. He told Irwin that the Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology gave the rabbits to Khaw for his experiment on May 13 and 20.
"It's therefore - in a cruel term - recycling," McCoy said.
Irving was not convinced by this, claiming the rabbits suffered first in the hands of Khaw before being euthanized. And if it was his experiment, he noted d he would have gone back to the ethics committee to apply for another approval.
