Coutts was convicted of murdering Jane Longhurst in February

Coutts, 36, of Waterloo Street, Hove, who was jailed for life, is appealing against his conviction and sentence.

His defence team has argued a verdict of manslaughter should have been offered at his trial in February, a view opposed by the Crown.

On Thursday Lord Woolf said the verdict would be given as soon as possible.

'Sexual accident'

Miss Longhurst, a special needs teacher, was strangled with a pair of tights in March 2003.

Coutts kept her body in a storage unit for weeks before her body was found burning on Wiggonholt Common in West Sussex, the jury heard in his trial.

He always denied murdering her, saying her death was an accident during consensual sex.

One of the grounds of the appeal is that it was wrong for the jury not to be offered an alternative verdict of manslaughter.

On Wednesday, Edward Fitzgerald QC, representing Coutts, said: "The judge decided not to leave the alternative verdict of manslaughter though the Crown conceded there was a legal basis for it."

Jane Longhurst was a special needs teacher in Brighton

But on Thursday John Kelsey-Fry, on behalf of the Crown, said the trial judge was "not wrong" not to offer a manslaughter verdict to the jury.

He said inviting the jury to consider manslaughter was "unfair and contrary to the interests of justice".

The case was presented as an "uncluttered" contest between murder and accident, said Mr Kelsey-Fry, because if the case failed on this basis the defendant would be totally acquitted.

He said there had been a "compelling circumstantial case of murder".

Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, sat on the appeal with two other judges.

He told the court: "We will give our judgement as soon as we can. There are some general points of wide importance."

Miss Longhurst, who was 31 when she was killed, was originally from Reading, Berkshire.