Review of Guisborough child killer Carol Hodgson's sentence rejected

A call to review the sentence of a mother who murdered her two-year-old son has been rejected.

Carol Hodgson suffocated Daniel Hodgson Green at their home in Upper Garth Gardens, Guisborough, in North Yorkshire, on 2 February before trying to take her own life.

She was given a life sentence with a minimum jail term of 18 years and four months at Teesside Crown Court.

An application for her sentence to be reviewed as being unduly lenient has now been refused as it did not meet the criteria.

The Attorney General's office has confirmed the test was not met for a referral under the Unduly Lenient Sentence Scheme.

A referral can only be made to the Court of Appeal if the sentence is not just lenient "but unduly so".

Cases are referred to the Court of Appeal when it is believed a judge may have made a "gross error" or imposed a sentences outside of those "reasonably available" in the circumstances.

On the day of the murder, Hodgson was found by her mother, who began giving her CPR before paramedics arrived and worked on Daniel, who was unresponsive.

The mum was due to attend the family court after Daniel's father had applied for joint custody.

Paul Watson QC, the Recorder of Middlesbrough, acknowledged the murder was a "premeditated killing".

When interviewed under caution, Hodgson denied killing her son saying that she remembered taking tablets and nothing after.

She said she only wanted to kill herself but she did not want to harm Daniel.

The 40-year-old was found with two wounds to her neck and a bloody kitchen knife lay nearby.

However, an investigation found she had suffocated Daniel with a bag and she later pleaded guilty.

In a statement read outside court in July, Daniel’s father Stefan Green said: "This tragedy has broken our family, our friends and our community but we will rebuild.

"We never got to make a connection with my son, we never got to see his first steps, hear his first words and now because of the actions of an evil person, a person who should have been one of the two people who he should have felt safest with, there is an entire lifetime of firsts lost."

A spokesperson from the Attorney General’s Office said: “The Attorney General was shocked and deeply saddened by this case. After careful consideration the Attorney General has concluded that this case cannot properly be referred to the Court of Appeal.

"A referral under the unduly lenient sentence scheme to the Court of Appeal can only be made if a sentence is not just lenient but unduly so, such that the sentencing judge made a gross error or imposed a sentence outside the range of sentences reasonably available in the circumstances of the offence. The threshold is a high one, and the test was not met in this case.”

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