Anger as wife-killer is `let off'

A judge's seven-year jail sentence for a husband who savagely beat his wife to death in front of his children was condemned last night as outrageously low.

The pressure group Rights of Women said it was "yet another example of male justice serving men's needs at the expense of women". Women Against Rape said Daniel Collins, 50, had been "let off".

The former Royal Marine, who had just been released from remand after being acquitted of raping his wife, had denied murder but admitted manslaughter on the ground of diminished responsibility. He had kicked and stamped on his wife's head, then beat her repeatedly with a heavy metal tyre wrench as she lay helpless in the garden.

A neighbour who tried to stop him was knocked unconscious and had her nose broken.

Mary Collins, 47, was unrecognisable because of the severity of her injuries, said John Bevan, for the prosecution at Southwark Crown Court. He added that the Crown had accepted Collins' plea only after anxious consideration of psychiatric reports showing he had been suffering from depression.