'Since the adoption of the European Convention on Human Rights, a murderer is now also told the "punishment part" of the sentence, that is the number of years which must be served before any application can be made for release on licence.
'Only the life term is set by statute, and judges are free to decide the appropriate punishment part in each case.
'In a benchmark judgment in 2002, the appeal court, then headed by Lord Cullen, the Lord Justice-General, reduced from 30 to 27 years the punishment part imposed on Andrew Walker, a former Royal Scots corporal who had shot dead three people in an army payroll robbery.
'Although it was never spelled out why a top line should be drawn, or why it ought to be set at 30 years, sentencing judges began to apply such a ceiling and also latched on to another part of the judgment to use 12 years as the "norm" in murder cases, the period going up or down depending on the aggravating or mitigating features of the individual case.
'It had been anticipated following the Walker ruling that 30 years would be reserved for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, as being guilty of the worst possible case of murder, but he was given 27 years.
'The sentencing judges in his case used 30 years as the maximum, but decided they could go below it because of his age, then 51, and because he would be serving his sentence in a foreign country and, as they understood it, in solitary confinement.
'The sentence was condemned by relatives of some of the 270 Lockerbie victims, and the Crown announced at that time that it would use the case to challenge the notional 30-year upper limit, but the sentencing issue has been held up while Megrahi pursues an appeal against his conviction.'
[From an article by John Robertson in today's edition of The Scotsman.]
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