A FINAL ACT OF SPITE FROM ARTHUR’S MURDERER

AS IF to emphasise her absolute lack of contrition for the murder of her six-year-old stepson Arthur Labinjo Hughes, Emma Tustin refused to leave the cells to attend court for her sentencing.

It was also a final act of spite in denying the boy’s grandparents the bleak satisfaction of seeing her in the dock as a convict and the judge set out her punishment (a minimum term of 29 years in prison).

Last month another killer, Chun Xu, refused to attend his sentencing for strangling a 16-year-old girl in the Welsh town of Ynyswen. Judge Paul Thomas, when sentencing Xu for a minimum of 30 years, said he would ‘address Xu as though he is in the dock’. Not very satisfactory. Then there was Hashem Abedi, who last year refused to attend sentencing at the Old Bailey for his role as an accomplice in his brother Salman’s mass murder of Ariana Grande fans at the Manchester Arena.

The presiding judge, Jeremy Baker, declared: ‘My understanding is that, having been brought to this building, Hashem Abedi has refused to come into the courtroom’, and explained that ‘force cannot be used’ to compel attendance for sentencing.

It would probably have been still more distressing for the victims’ relatives had Abedi been forced into court, only then to start yelling insults. But it seems wrong that there is no penalty for refusing to appear.

And as it is not a crime, it can’t be addressed by an increment on the sentence. As a senior criminal barrister put it to me: ‘It is not a contempt of court — which is a crime — but it is contemptuous of the court.’

So what could be done to penalise such behaviour? His own off-the-cuff suggestion seemed a good one: ‘It is quite easy to make the first year of a person’s imprisonment less pleasant by withdrawing privileges, for example by not allowing them a television in their cell.’

Although, given the nature of her crime, Emma Tustin will have more than that to worry about when she encounters other prisoners.