Application for leave to appeal against sentence said to be unduly lenient. The defendant had been convicted of murder and other very serious offences of violence arising from one incident. He had been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 16 years.
Held: 25 year minimum substituted: ‘this was a remorseless killing of a defenceless boy — not much more than a lad — as he lay asleep. It was carried out deliberately. That offence, together with the associated offences of attempted murder and wounding with intent on the wife and daughter respectively, after he had deliberately killed their son and brother, mean that, despite the absence of any of the features expressly identified in paragraph 5 of Schedule 21, this was a case of particularly high seriousness. But whether that is so or not, and assuming that the starting point was that taken by the judge, the offence was aggravated in the extreme by the circumstances of the associated offences and by the facts of the offences as we have endeavoured to summarise them in the course of this judgment. We cannot ignore the fact that the victim died in circumstances of extreme vulnerability. Further, there was an attempt to kill the wife which failed because of the courage of her daughter who stepped in and took the blows that were intended to kill her mother.’
Judges:
Lord Judge LCJ, Simon, Royce JJ
Citations:
[2009] EWCA Crim 2701
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Crime
Updated: 25 August 2022; Ref: scu.425519