Sarah Everard killer: Wayne Couzens appeals whole-life sentenceon May 4, 2022 at 2:19 pm

The killer of Sarah Everard is challenging a sentencing order that said he should not be released from prison until he dies.

Wayne Couzens’ appeal is part of a major review by the Court of Appeal of whole-life orders, including arguments for their wider use.

His lawyer said his remorse and guilty plea should be taken into account.

Lawyers for the Attorney General are also trying to increase sentences in two murder cases.

The lawyer for Couzens, Jim Sturman QC, said the former Metropolitan Police officer accepted his crimes were “abhorrent” and nothing in his arguments was intended to minimise the impact on his victim’s family and friends.

But he said the sentencing judge’s finding that he was not remorseful was “untenable”.

“He was too ashamed to meet anyone’s eye. He was not brazen, staring down at the court in the way sometimes seen,” the lawyer said.

Mr Sturman said it was accepted that Couzens deserved “decades in jail” but his remorse and guilty plea should balance out the aggravating factor of having carried out the kidnap, rape and murder while he was a serving police officer.

There are 64 people currently in prison in England and Wales under whole-life orders, which are reserved for exceptional cases and mean they will never be released.

Couzens is one of two with whole-life terms involved in the Court of Appeal review, along with Ian Stewart, convicted of murdering his wife and fiancee.

Three more sentences are also being considered:

Representing the Attorney General, Tom Little QC said Tustin’s case “merited at the very least consideration of a whole-life order”.

He said Arthur was “forced to live a solitary and lonely life” and “subjected to the most unimaginable suffering”.

In written submissions, he said the murder was “sadistically motivated”, with “systematic brutality amounting to torture”.

Tustin’s lawyer, Mary Prior QC, said the sentence was given by a highly experienced trial judge after considering all the evidence.

He concluded the starting point should be 30 years because of the sadistic elements of the killing, and then took into account the murderer’s background of growing up around violence, history of mental health issues and suicide attempts, she said.

Ms Prior said: “This was the right, fair and proper approach in this very difficult and exceptional case.”

In the case of Monaghan – who at the age of 30 was given a 40-year term for killing his baby daughter, toddler son and a new partner, as well as attempting to kill another child – Mr Little said the sentence was “unduly lenient”.

His crimes, over a seven-year period, were of “exceptionally high” seriousness and there was “no mitigation here at all”, the lawyer for the Crown said.

Benjamin Myers QC, representing the killer as he listened in from HMP Wakefield, said the decision not to impose a whole-life order was at the discretion of the sentencing judge.