The jury in the trial of a Felixstowe man accused of killing his wife has been sent away until Thursday to allow the judge and barristers in the case to resolve legal matters.

Judge David Goodin told the jury today that the court would not be sitting on Friday and the trial would continue into next week.

Before Ipswich Crown Court is 61-year-old Shaun Ryan who has denied murdering his 67-year-old wife Jean Ryan in April last year.

The court has heard that police officers who went to the couple’s home in Gosford Way, Felixstowe, in response to a 999 call from her, in which she could be heard screaming and shouting “no”, found her body in the bedroom with a knife in her back.

A pathologist who carried out a post-mortem examination on Mrs Ryan found she had suffered a total of 14 stab wounds.

Dr Nat Cary said that some of the stab wounds caused damage to Mrs Ryan’s ribs and cartilage and these would have required “severe” force.

He said that in addition to a fatal wound to her back, which cut a major artery, Mrs Ryan suffered a wound above the right breast which went though the diaphragm and into the liver and another had severed a jugular vein.

He said that cuts on Mrs Ryan’s hands and arms could have been caused as she tried to defend herself.

Dr Cary said in addition to carrying out a post-mortem examination of Mrs Ryan he had examined photographs of cuts to her husband Shaun Ryan’s hands.

He said that Ryan had multiple wounds to his fingers and the palms of both hands and in his opinion these could have been caused by him fending off a knife attack or during a struggle to get control of a knife.

The court has heard that the defence don’t dispute that Ryan, who has suffered from epilepsy since the 1970s after being hit on the head with a brick while he was serving in the army, caused his wife’s death and the issue was his mental state at the time.