Criminals Launch Appeal Over Life Sentences

Appeals are to be launched by five of the UK's most dangerous criminals over their life sentences for murder and rape.

Their cases will be heard by five judges at the Court of Appeal in London, which includes the Lord Chief Justice and Lord Justice Leveson.

One of the men is Kiaran Stapleton, found guilty of murdering Indian student Anuj Bidve in Salford last year.

Some legal observers are seeing their appeals as a test of the whole-of-life term.

Four of the five men were given whole life tariffs, meaning they would spend the rest of their lives in prison.

These five appeals come ahead of separate cases also being heard at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Judges there had ruled in January that the whole life term handed down to convicted murderer Jeremy Bamber and two other men did not amount to inhuman and degrading punishment.

Condemning people to die in jail was not "grossly disproportionate" and in each case London's High Court had "decided that an all-life tariff was required, relatively recently and following a fair and detailed consideration", the judges ruled.

But that ruling will now be tested by the court's Grand Chamber in Strasbourg after a panel of five judges granted the appeal by killer Douglas Vinter, who stabbed his wife in February 2008.

(H)