Wayne Couzens and Arthur Labinjo-Hughes' killers to have sentences challenged together
Sarah Everard's murderer Wayne Couzens and the killers of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes will have challenges to their prison sentences heard together by senior judges.
In a hearing in May, five judges will hear sentence challenges or appeals relating to five high-profile killers, including double-murderer Ian Stewart, and child killer Jordan Monaghan.
Couzens and wife-killer Stewart are both expected to appeal their whole-life sentences, while the jail terms of Arthur's killers, Emma Tustin and Thomas Hughes, are being challenged as 'unduly lenient.'
The Attorney General, Suella Braverman, is also expected to challenge Monaghan’s sentence over the murders of his two children and his partner.
Which cases will be heard?
Wayne Couzens
The serving Metropolitan Police officer kidnapped Sarah Everard off the streets of South London, raped and then murdered her, before dumping her body in woodland in Kent.
The former PC was handed a whole-life term last year over the 33-year-old's death in March 2021.
The firearms officer used his warrant card and handcuffs to snatch the marketing executive off the street, using Covid lockdown rules to make a false arrest.
Ms Everard's murder prompted widespread outrage, and led to protests around the country as demonstrators called for women to be protected from male violence.
Sentencing Couzens, Lord Justice Fulford said the circumstances of the case were “devastating, tragic and wholly brutal” and were so exceptional that it warranted a whole-life order.
It was the first time the sentence had been imposed for a single murder of an adult not committed in the course of a terror attack.
Couzens lodged an appeal in October in a bid to reduce the length of his prison sentence.
Emma Tustin and Thomas Hughes
Six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes' killers are also expected to have their sentences reviewed.
Arthur suffered an unsurvivable brain injury while in the sole care of his father's partner, Emma Tustin.
She was jailed for life with a minimum term of 29 years after being convicted of murder by assaulting the child on June 16, 2020.
A court heard Arthur died due to Tustin violently shaking him and repeatedly banging his head at her Solihull home - likely against the hallway wall, floor or door.
The schoolboy, whose body was also covered in 130 bruises, died in hospital the next day.
Arthur's father, Hughes, who was sentenced to 21 years in prison for manslaughter, is due to appeal against his sentence.
Hughes’ "infatuation" for Tustin had "obliterated" any love for his son, sentencing judge Mr Justice Mark Wall QC told the court as the pair were jailed.
A petition launched in the aftermath of the sentencing, calling for whole life sentences for child killers, surpassed half a million signatures.
Arthur's killers' sentences will be challenged by the Attorney General under the unduly lenient sentence scheme.
Ian Stewart
The 'master manipulator's first murder was uncovered only after he went on to kill a second time.
Stewart killed 51-year-old children’s book author Helen Bailey in 2016, and dumped her body in the cesspit of the £1.5 million home they shared in Royston, Hertfordshire.
A trial previously heard it was most likely she was suffocated while sedated by drugs, and Stewart was found guilty of her murder in 2017.
After this conviction, police investigated the 2010 death of Stewart’s first wife, Diane Stewart, 47.
The cause of her death was recorded at the time as sudden unexplained death in epilepsy.
But in February Stewart was found guilty of her murder too.
Stewart is also due to appeal against his whole life order.
Jordan Monaghan
The minimum 40-year term handed to Jordan Monaghan after he murdered two of his children and his partner will also be reviewed by the judges considering how whole-life orders are imposed.
The Attorney General is also expected to challenge Monaghan’s sentence.
In December 2021 Monaghan was jailed after smothering his 24-day-old daughter Ruby as she slept in a Moses basket on New Year’s Day 2013.
Eight months later he smothered his 21-month-old son Logan, and six years after that he murdered his new partner, Evie Adams, with a drugs overdose.
The hearing is expected to take place at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London from May 4.
Meanwhile, a national review into the death of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes remains underway.
Earlier this year, a safeguarding report found that 'urgent action' was needed following death of the six-year-old.