The Zoom room full of infamous killers demanding mercy

Sarah Everard cop and child murderers among rogues’ gallery in jail term challenge

SOME of Britain’s most notorious killers appeared together by video link at the high Court yesterday – in an unprecedented joint challenge to whole-life sentences.

For the first time, judges heard appeals from a line-up of killers at once – including Sarah Everard’s murderer Wayne Couzens.

Some argued in an extraordinary joint hearing that they shouldn’t die behind bars. Judges opted to hear five appeals or challenges together as the Attorney General Suella Braverman believes the crimes merit whole-life tariffs.

Appearing on a series of video links from jails around the country, the Court of Appeal’s screens resembled a rogues’ gallery of monsters pleading for mercy.

They were led by former Scotland yard officer Couzens, whose barrister claimed he was so remorseful and ashamed that he couldn’t look the family of Miss Everard in the eye at his sentencing.

Child killers Jordan Monaghan, handed a minimum 40-year prison term for the murder of his new partner and two of his children, and Thomas hughes, sentenced to 21 years for the manslaughter of his six-year-old son Arthur Labinjo-hughes, joined the hearing from hMP Wakefield.

Arthur suffered a fatal brain injury while in the care of hughes’ partner Emma

‘Too ashamed to meet anyone’s eye’

Tustin, who also wants a sentence reduction after being jailed for murder, with a recommended 29-year minimum term.

Another challenging his whole-life sentence was double killer Ian Stewart, who murdered his first wife six years before killing his fiancee, children’s author helen Bailey. Neither Tustin nor Stewart attended court yesterday, but the others all appeared on screen.

Tom Little, QC, representing the Attorney General, told the court that ‘whilst the offending in these various cases differs markedly, one common feature of the applications is that either a whole life order was imposed [and] is challenged’, or wasn’t, and the Attorney General believes such a term should have been imposed.

In the case of Couzens, his barrister argued yesterday that the former firearms officer should be let out earlier because he didn’t run a ‘false defence’ like other predators such as Sir David Amess’s killer Ali harbi Ali and Milly Dowler murderer Levi Bellfield, who both refused to admit their crimes.

Members of Miss Everard’s family sat listening as Jim Sturman, QC, said Couzens was so racked by guilt, that at his sentencing, ‘he was too ashamed to meet anyone’s eye’. he conceded his client deserves ‘decades in jail’, but argued the whole life sentence was excessive and that the judge failed to take his remorse into account.

The former Met PC was handed a whole-life term last year for the rape and murder of Miss Everard whom he abducted in south London on March 3, 2021. It was the first time the term was imposed for a single murder of an adult not committed in a terror attack.

There are 64 prisoners serving whole-life orders in Britain, but most are serial perpetrators. ‘Mr Couzens accepts that his crimes are abhorrent and nothing I say in any way is intended to minimise them or to minimise the impact of these crimes on Sarah Everard’s family and huge circle of friends,’ Mr Sturman said. yesterday a bearded Couzens spoke only to confirm his name on video-link from hMP Frankland. But Mr Little argued: ‘his criminality was, as found by the judge, a fundamental attack in reality on our democratic way of life.’

The hearing before Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett and four other judges concluded yesterday, with the judges set to issue their rulings at a later date.