KILLER cop Wayne Couzens today lost a Court of Appeal bid to reduce his whole-life sentence.
The former Met Police officer, who is behind bars for the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard, is still set to die in prison.
Wayne Couzens will still die in prison after losing his bid to appeal his whole-life sentence[/caption]
Sarah Everard was kidnapped, raped and killed by serving the Met officer[/caption]
Emma Tustin, Thomas Hughes, Ian Stewart, Wayne Couzens and Jordan Monaghan have their prison sentences reviewed at the Court of Appeal[/caption]
Emma Tustin and Thomas Hughes, who killed six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, also had their sentences reviewed.
Like Couzens, step-mum Tustin’s bid was rejected, but dad Hughes had his 21-year term increased by three years.
Appealing against the whole-life term, Couzens’ lawyers argued he deserved “decades in jail” but said a whole-life term was excessive.
However, today the Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett and four other judges refused to lower Couzens’ sentence.
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His whole-life tariff was the first to be imposed for a single murder of an adult not committed in the course of a terror attack.
Lord Justice Fulford imposed the rare order, which just 61 criminals in the UK have, as he abused his position as a police officer.
Couzens, who worked in the parliamentary and diplomatic protection command, lured marketing executive Sarah into his car by fake arresting her using his warrant card.
He then drove her 80 miles to Kent where he raped her then used his police-issue belt to strangle her.
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Reviewing the sentences of little Arthur’s killers, the court was told he had suffered an unsurvivable brain injury while in the sole care of Tustin, who was jailed for life with a minimum term of 29 years.
Tustin and Hughes, who was sentenced to 21 years for manslaughter, appealed against the length of their sentences which were also challenged as being unduly lenient.
The judges refused to change Tustin’s sentence, finding she should not be given a whole-life order and that her current sentence was suitable.
However, Hughes’ sentence was found to be unduly lenient and was increased to 24 years.
Double killer Stewart, who murdered his wife six years before he went on to murder his fiancee, also appealed against his whole-life order.
Stewart killed 51-year-old children’s author Helen Bailey in 2016 and was found guilty of her murder in 2017.
After this conviction, police investigated the 2010 death of Stewart’s first wife, Diane Stewart, 47, and in February he was found guilty of her murder.
Amjad Malik QC, for Stewart, argued that the whole-life order he was given for the murder of his first wife was not justified in the circumstances of the case.
In a ruling on Friday, Lord Burnett and the four other judges said Stewart was “not one of the rare cases” where a whole-life order should be imposed, reducing his sentence to life with a 35-year minimum term.
Judges also reviewed the potentially unduly lenient sentence of Jordan Monaghan, who was handed a minimum term of 40 years at Preston Crown Court after he murdered two of his children and his new partner.
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The Court of Appeal previously heard that between January 2013 and October 2016 he murdered three-week-old Ruby and 21-month-old Logan before murdering Evie Adams.
In today’s ruling, the judges found that while a whole-life order should not be imposed, the sentence should be increased to life with a minimum term of 48 years.
