Wayne Couzens deserves “decades in jail” but not a whole-life order, his barrister has told a court in the former police officer’s appeal against his prison sentence for the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard.
On Wednesday, senior judges heard challenges or appeals to the prison sentences of five killers, including the whole-life terms of Couzens and the double murderer Ian Stewart. Emma Tustin and Thomas Hughes, who killed six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, are also having their sentences reviewed. The term handed to Jordan Monaghan, who murdered two of his children and his new partner, is also under review.
Jim Sturman QC, for Couzens, said the sentencing judge’s finding that the former police officer was not remorseful was “untenable”.
But Tom Little QC, representing the Crown Prosecution Service, said Couzens’s offending was of the “utmost seriousness”, adding: “His criminality was, as found by the judge, a fundamental attack in reality on our democratic way of life.”
A bearded Couzens, wearing a grey jumper, appeared by video link from HMP Frankland at the start of the hearing for his appeal against his whole-life term.
The former police officer was handed a whole-life term last year for the rape and murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard after he abducted her in south London on 3 March 2021.
Sturman told the court of appeal: “Mr Couzens accepts that his crimes are abhorrent and nothing I say in any way is intended to minimise them or to minimise the impact of these crimes on Sarah Everard’s family and huge circle of friends.”
He told the court that it was accepted that Couzens deserved “decades in jail” but argued a whole-life term was excessive. Sturman added: “The combination of his remorse and his guilty pleas … should balance out that aggravating factor which clearly exists, of him being a police officer, albeit off-duty in half uniform.”
The barrister told the court that Couzens was unique out of the 64 people currently serving whole-life orders. He said in written submissions: “Whilst this may well be considered by the public and the court to be a case of equal seriousness to a political, religious, or ideological murder, it is not such an offence, not does it fall into any other category listed in the schedule.”
Sturman later argued that police officers are not unique in being able to detain people, giving an example of a teacher able to detain vulnerable pupils.
He concluded: “A lot of very unique and very horrible cases come before the court … but in our respectful submission, the court should think long and hard and step back from a whole-life order in this case.”
Little, for the CPS and attorney general’s office (AGO), said of Couzens that “a whole-life order was a correct sentence to impose in this truly exceptional case”.
“A police officer is in a uniquely powerful position,” Little said, with Couzens carrying out an arrest, alone, on one of London’s busiest roads during lockdown.
Little said the sentencing judge had provided a “clear and coherent justification” for the sentence that he had imposed. “The judge was entitled to form the view that he did in relation to a lack of genuine contrition,” he added.
Couzens, 49, formerly of Deal, Kent, and Ian Stewart, 61, previously of Royston, Hertfordshire, are attempting to appeal against their whole-life orders.
Tustin, 32, previously of Solihull, and Monaghan, 30 at sentence and previously of Blackburn, will have their sentences challenged by the AGO as unduly lenient.
The hearing of the five sentence reviews finished on Wednesday and a decision will be given in writing at a later date.
• This article was amended on 4 May 2022 to remove the incorrect claim, provided by a news agency, that Couzens’ sentencing was the first time a whole-life order had been imposed for a single murder of an adult not committed in the course of a terror attack.
