“As human beings, our hearts inevitably go out to Vicky Hamilton and her family in their anguish.”

The judge said the jury may also harbour feelings of rage against whoever was responsible, but it was their solemn duty to put all emotional responses of that kind to one side when reaching their verdict.

They had to look at the evidence fairly and dispassionately, he told them. He reminded the jury he was responsible for deciding matters of law, while they were responsible for deciding the facts of the case.

He said he would address them on three main areas. The first chapter would involve discussion of the general rules that apply when judging and assessing evidence.

The second chapter would involve looking at the indictment, and the third would cover the particular task facing them in this trial.

Reminding them they were responsible for deciding the facts, he said, “It is your recollection, it is your judgment, it is your decision that will count.”

Lord Emslie then discussed how the evidence of witnesses should be evaluated. He said suggestions contained in questions from lawyers and police officers were not evidence.

For example, in this case, regarding the post mortem, the Solicitor General had included the suggestion Vicky was killed in February, 2001.

Similarly, Defence QC Donald Findlay had suggested something could have happened which did not involve the intention to cause danger to life.

However, it was the response of the witness being questioned that the jury had to concentrate on. Lord Emslie said they had to decide on the honesty and reliability of the witnesses they had heard.

They could accept a witnesses evidence in part or in whole, but if they rejected evidence, it did not follow that the opposite, or something different, must be true.

They must not guess or speculate, but were entitled to draw inferences, deductions or conclusions from the evidence.

Lord Emslie also advised the jury to set aside any pre-conceived ideas or prejudices they may have. They were not there to judge other people’s lifestyles or attitudes, he told them.

In addition, they should set aside any sympathy they may have for Vicky Hamilton, her family and friends, or indeed Peter Tobin.

Lord Emslie then turned to the burden of proof, which he said lies with the Crown. The defence did not have to prove anything, he said.

The Crown had to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt and, if the jury was left with a reasonable doubt, Tobin had to be given the benefit of that doubt and be acquitted.

Turning to Tobin’s special defence of alibi, he said it did not alter the high standard of proof required for a conviction, and did not need to be proved by the defence.

He then discussed the issue of corroboration — the need for evidence from more than one source.

This applied to two essentials of the charge — that the crime alleged had been committed and that it was committed by the accused.

In this case, there was sufficient evidence in law to entitle the jury if they thought it appropriate to convict Tobin, though that would depend entirely on how much of the evidence they felt they could accept and the inferences, if any, that could be drawn safely from that.

The use of circumstantial evidence in this case raised the question of whether the jury could find a concurrence of evidence from a variety of different sources which coherently pointed in the same direction.

Lord Emslie then turned to the admissibility of evidence, and discussed how the jury should approach earlier statements made by witnesses, including five people who could not attend court because they were unwell or because they had died since making their statements.

Lord Emslie then embarked on chapter two of his address.

Turning to the indictment, he took the jury through the two charges facing Tobin, and outlined the legal definitions of abduction, assault and murder.

He said that if a person died as the result of an assault, but the jury was not satisfied the assailant acted in the state of mind necessary for murder, he would be guilty of the lesser crime of culpable homicide.

It would also be culpable homicide if the consequences were unforeseeable, he said.

However, it was an essential requirement of both murder and culpable homicide that death was caused by an assault or unlawful act.

It was for the jury to decide if the death of Vicky Hamilton had been brought about by a criminal assault, as alleged in the murder charge, as opposed to by accident or through natural causes or something else.

The jury could find this causation of death had been proved even though the precise method of death could not be ascertained by pathologists.

Lord Emslie said the jury could only find Tobin guilty of attempting to defeat the ends of justice if they convicted him on the first charge.

However, it would be open to them to convict him on charge one and acquit on charge two.

It was also open to them to strike out parts of the charges they did not feel had been satisfactorily proved and convict Tobin of the remainder, he said.

Lord Emslie said he did not propose to go over the past four-week’s evidence in detail, but said he would try to narrow the questions the jury would have to ask themselves.

He cautioned that anything he said or counsel said should be rejected if jurors did not agree, because it was their memories that count. The Crown position, he said, was that they had proved beyond reasonable doubt that Vicky Hamilton was abducted, drugged, assaulted and murdered on February 10, 1991, and they proved beyond reasonable doubt that Peter Tobin was the person responsible and that, thereafter, he attempted to cover his tracks and defeat the ends of justice.

In complete contrast, the judge said, the defence consistently disputed the Crown had brought home any part of either of the charges beyond reasonable doubt. He told jurors that over the course of the trial they have heard from 122 witnesses in total, and have seen hundreds of productions.

From this, he said the Crown case fell into three main categories:

The Bathgate evidence which included sightings of Vicky, a sighting of Peter Tobin, the finding of the knife and evidence from a lot of former occupiers of the Robertson Avenue address where Peter Tobin lived at the time;

The Margate evidence covered the discovery of Vicky Hamilton’s remains and evidence that Peter Tobin moved to that house in March, 1991;

The third category, forensic evidence, related to skin and DNA on the knife in the Bathgate house, DNA from the toddler son of Peter Tobin on the purse discovered in St Andrews Square 10 days after her disappearance and DNA from Peter Tobin found on swabs taken from Vicky’s body.

It also included evidence of fingerprints on one of the bin bags in which Vicky’s torso was buried.

These three categories, Lord Emslie said, had been subject to consistent challenge and criticism by the defence.

Defence counsel Donald Findlay maintained there was no evidence to bring home any of the charges and there was no direct evidence to answer many of the question he raised.

The judge told jurors they would be required to look at each aspect of the Crown case individually, and collectively and decide whether they go far enough to convince jurors that Peter Tobin was the person involved and responsible for the death of Vicky Hamilton.

Lord Emslie said in theory it was possible that one element of the Crown case was so overwhelmingly strong that they would need little from other evidence to corroborate it, and he said the stronger the jury thought one connecting factor was, it might be the less they needed to support it.

The jury retired to consider their verdicts at 12.20pm, and broke for lunch around 1pm.

The charges:

Tobin denies that on February 10, 1991, at a number of locations in Bathgate, he abducted, compelled or otherwise induced Vicky Hamilton, to accompany him to his home in Bathgate and there, or elsewhere in Scotland, assaulted her, drugged her, struggled with her, compressed or otherwise injured her neck, indecently assaulted her and murdered her.

He also denies that between February 10, 1991 and December 15 the same year, at his home in Bathgate, at St Andrew Square in Edinburgh, at an address in Margate and elsewhere in the UK he attempted to defeat the ends of justice.

That charge alleges he concealed Vicky's body; removed and disposed of items of clothing and footwear and other of her belongings; that, knowing a missing person enquiry was underway he deposited a purse belonging to Vicky under a portable building with intent to mislead police into believing she had run away from home, bisected her body with knives and similar instruments and bound and wrapped her body in coverings and bin bags; disposed of and concealed the knives; and that he concealed, transported and buried her body parts.

Tobin has lodged a special defence of alibi that between 5pm and midnight on February 10, when the crime was committed, he was in the Portsmouth area and then travelling from Southern England to Scotland and did not return to Edinburgh before 6.30am on February 11.

The trial before Judge Lord Emslie and a jury is being prosecuted by Solicitor General Frank Mulholland QC and the defence team is headed by Donald Findlay QC.