Judges to rule on Wayne Couzens and child-killers’ sentence reduction appeals

Double murderer Ian Bailey and triple killer Jordan Monaghan also had their sentences reviewed.

Court artist sketch by Elizabeth Cook of Jordan Monaghan (left) and Wayne Couzens as they view, via videolink, a hearing at the High Court in London (PA) (PA Wire)

Wayne Couzens and the killers of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes are due to find out whether their prison sentences have been changed at the Court of Appeal.

In May, five judges heard challenges to or appeals against the prison sentences of five convicted killers, including the whole-life terms of former police officer Couzens and double murderer Ian Stewart.

Emma Tustin and Thomas Hughes, who killed Arthur, also had their sentences reviewed, along with triple killer Jordan Monaghan.

On Friday, the judges will give their ruling on whether any of the sentences should be increased or lowered as they consider how whole-life orders are imposed.

Last year, Couzens was handed a whole-life term for the rape and murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard, the first time the sentence had been imposed for a single murder of an adult not committed in the course of a terror attack.

Appealing against the whole-life term, Couzens’s lawyers argued he deserved “decades in jail” but said a whole-life term was excessive.

Reviewing the sentences of six-year-old Arthur’s killers, the Court of Appeal 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 Arthur’s father, Hughes, who was sentenced to 21 years for manslaughter, appealed against the length of their sentences which were also challenged as being unduly lenient.

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.

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.

The ruling by the Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett and four other judges will be handed down at 9.30am.