Their crime was barbaric... I’ve been so let down
PC’s widow vows to fight on as Appeal Court rejects bid to increase jail for smirking killers
THE devastated widow of PC Andrew Harper said she felt ‘let down’ by the justice system yesterday after the Court of Appeal refused to increase the jail terms for her husband’s killers.
Lissie Harper said the sentences given to the three teenagers who dragged the officer to his death behind a car were too lenient and ‘did not reflect the severity and barbarity of the crimes they committed’.
Attorney General Suella Braverman QC told the court last month that the trio should have been given life sentences. But Dame Victoria Sharp, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde and Mr Justice William Davis, rejected the application yesterday.
Henry Long, 19, the driver of the car, was jailed for 16 years at the Old Bailey
‘These sentences are far too lenient’
in July. His accomplices Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers, both 18, were given 13 years for manslaughter. The teenagers laughed and smirked their way through their court appearance.
PC Harper, 28, was dragged along country lanes by the teenagers’ getaway car when his ankle became caught in a tow-rope as he tried to stop them stealing a quadbike near Reading.
Mrs Harper, 29, his childhood sweetheart who married him just a month before his death, launched the Harper’s Law campaign in August for automatic life sentences for those convicted of killing emergency service workers.
She said she was disappointed in yesterday’s judgment and vowed to continue her fight until the law had passed through Parliament.
‘I am of course disappointed with this outcome and ultimately feel along with the Attorney General and the majority of our country that these sentences are far too lenient, that they do not reflect the severity and barbarity of the crimes they committed,’ she said.
‘I continue to feel let down by our justice system and the inadequate laws that we have in place.’ She added: ‘My husband was killed in a barbaric way that has seen the nation shocked.
‘This single act has rocked the lives of so many people who both loved Andrew and those who have watched from afar the heartbreaking story of his death.
‘To take someone’s life surely should mean to have your own freedom taken in return. Yet these criminals will see the light of day far, far earlier than they ever deserve to. I remain more determined than ever to do what is right and to ensure we see what should have been in place so long ago.’
Lawyers for Long, Cole and Bowers, who appeared by video-link from Belmarsh jail in south-east London, argued their sentences were ‘manifestly excessive’ and should be reduced. This appeal was also rejected by the Court of Appeal as being ‘wholly unarguable’.
Cole and Bowers had also sought to appeal against their convictions but this was also rejected.
Dame Victoria said: ‘ Nothing in the grounds of appeal provides any arguable basis for a successful challenge to any of the sentences imposed for manslaughter.
‘They were severe sentences for such young offenders, but the applicants had committed a grave crime and their punishments were deserved.’
The judgment described the submissions made by Mrs Braverman as ‘to say the least, unusual’ as they implied Mr Justice Andrew Edis should have departed from relevant sentencing guidelines when he sentenced the teenagers at the Old Bailey.
It added that insufficient explanation had been given why the judge should have taken such a course.
Some legal commentators criticised Mrs Braverman’s handling of the case.
Joshua Rozenberg, a non-executive board member of the Law Commission, said: ‘What saddens me most of all about this case is that PC Harper’s family must have been led to believe that the Attorney General’s intervention would have some chance of success,’ he added.
Prosecutors had argued the teenagers knew they had been dragging PC Harper when they sped off in Sulham-stead, Berkshire, in August last year.
But the trio were cleared of murder at the Old Bailey by a jury that deliberated for more than 12 hours.