Teenage killers of children will face a lifetime behind bars in the biggest shake-up of sentencing for 20 years. A move to include 18 to 20-year-olds in whole life orders is one of the sweeping changes unveiled today by the Government.
Other teen killers’ life sentences will no longer be reviewed every two years. This will spare their victims’ families having to relive their heartbreaking ordeals repeatedly.
It means murderer Sean Mercer, who shot 11-year-old Liverpool lad Rhys Jones in 2007, will have to serve the full 22-year minimum term handed down when he was 16.
The same applies to the killers of sales manager Garry Newlove, beaten to death the same year by youths he confronted vandalising his wife’s car in Warrington, Cheshire.
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