"We wouldn't be here if we have a normal person in the dock, this is a jury to determine insanity. We have a delusional person, a person detached from reality."

Addressing the jury, lawyer Dustin Camilleri urged them to look at the clinical file to understand Emmanuel's condition.

"Just because they weren't aware of his condition, medically, from before...does that mean that he is not suffering from an illness?"

"This is not a question of evading criminal responsibility," he said, "it is a question to determine if there was responsibility."

"I do not know who does not sympathise with the mother of the victim. You would have to be of stone not to," said the lawyer, "but that should not impinge on the exercise we are doing now. it is not sympathy that would arrive for a decision, but logical thought."

Camilleri said there were three main sources to gather examples of the accused's delusions: the psychiatric file, the report by Dr. Cassar and his interrogation. All three were pieces to a puzzle, he said, "a puzzle called delusion."

He noted that in his first interrogation, Michael Emmanuel never says he did not do it, but says "I do not know. I do not know anything." "Is he exempted from shock? Is a delusional person exempted from shock?" asked the lawyer.

Emmanuel was consistent, insisted his lawyer. "He always said the same things, there was a cross, there was, clearly touched by the victim from DNA evidence...can we doubt him? We cannot doubt he is delusional, but we are certain that according to him, what happened is not real."

"He said that 'there was a girl in Marsaxlokk, I don't know her name, but she will tell me who to marry' - he was never infatuated by this girl, but only said that there was a girl in Marsaxlokk who would tell him who to marry."

The lawyer also pointed out that a doctor had seen him whilst heavily medicated and had still concluded that he was delusional.

Just because he was insane at the time of the offences, that did not mean he would get away with anything, said the lawyer. "With what did he get away exactly?" he asked. "Because he is here now."

"He will not get away with anything, insane or not," explained the lawyer, because he had to be declared fit to return to society to be let out of the mental health facility where he was going to be detained in for the foreseeable future.

"Justice is there to serve all...deliver justice as it should be done," said Camilleri, closing with a plea to the jurors to declare Emmanuel insane according to the criminal code.

The judge will address the jurors tomorrow morning, before sending them to deliberate on a verdict.