[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Scotsman. The following are excerpts.]
Killers could have to spend the rest of their lives behind bars after a landmark ruling by appeal court judges that increased prison terms for murder in Scotland.
Five judges ruled the current 12- year minimum sentence often imposed in murder cases was generally too lenient, while the top level of 30 years was too low.
The decision effectively paves the way for "life to mean life" in the worst murder cases. (...)
Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini was the architect of the changes. (...)
Lord [Justice General] Hamilton, sitting with Lords Reed, Clarke and Mackay and Lady Dorrian, agreed to all the Lord Advocate's requests.
Anyone convicted of murder receives a mandatory life sentence. Judges also have to impose a "punishment part" of the sentence – the period that must be served before an application for parole can be made.
In a 2002 judgment, the appeal court, then headed by Lord Cullen, reduced from 30 to 27 years the punishment part imposed on former Royal Scots corporal Andrew Walker, who shot dead three people in an army payroll robbery.
Following that ruling, judges began to apply a 30-year ceiling and used 12 years as the "norm" in murder cases, going up or down depending on the aggravating or mitigating features of an individual case.
It had been expected that 30 years would be reserved for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, but he was given 27 years. The judges in his case used 30 years as a maximum but reduced it because of Megrahi's age, then 51, and because he would, as they understood it, be serving his sentence in a foreign country in solitary confinement. In yesterday's judgment, Lord Hamilton said the Prisoners and Criminal Proceedings (Scotland) Act prescribed no minimum or maximum punishment part, merely that it be a specified period, and it could be a period that exceeded the prisoner's likely lifespan.
He said the Walker judgment had not stated in terms that 30 years would be the maximum, but had been interpreted as such.
"In our view, there may well be cases, for example mass murders by terrorist action, for which a punishment part of more than 30 years may, subject to any mitigatory considerations, be appropriate. In so far as Walker and al-Megrahi may suggest that 30 years is a virtual maximum punishment part, that suggestion is disapproved," Lord Hamilton said.
Presumably this doesn't affect the concept of compassionate release in cases where the prisoner has a terminal illness and is close to the end of his/her life. Under this new ruling,I assume that al Megrahi would still have been released.
ReplyDeleteYes. There is no suggestion in the judgment that it is intended to affect compassionate release. But it does seem to suggest that if the Lord Advocate had not abandoned her appeal against the 27 year "punishment part" of Mr Megrahi's life sentence, the court might well have increased the period.
ReplyDelete