Prosecution begins closing submissions in Grace Millane murder trial

1 NEWS reporter Paul Hobbs has been covering the trial at the High Court in Auckland.

The Crown has begun its closing submission to the jury in the Grace Millane murder trial.

A 27-year-old Auckland man, who can't be named, is accused of murdering the 22-year-old English backpacker by strangling her to death.

Crown Prosecutor Brian Dickey told the jury it only has to prove reckless intent to prove murder.

He reminded the jury of the key evidence of a pathologist who said she would have lost consciousness after three to five minutes and it could have taken up to 10 minutes for her to have died.

It would take up to five minutes to manually strangle a person to death, the expert witness told jurors.

Mr Dickey said the man knew he was causing death that night by strangling her and as she fell into unconsciousness “he carried on” to kill her.

“He was aware of the risk and he took it”.

The prosecutor said it wasn’t sex play or sex games, it was murder.

He went on to say the man eroticised her death by taking compromising photos of her dead body.

Ms Millane went missing on the eve of her 22nd birthday last December, with her body found in a suitcase in Auckland's Waitākere Ranges.

The Crown says the accused strangled her to death in a central city hotel room, while his lawyers say her death was an accident after the man applied pressure to her neck with her consent and encouragement.

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