Appeal judges reject longer jail terms for wife-killers

A plea BY government law officers for longer sentences for husbands who kill their wives has been rejected by judges in the Court of Appeal .

The court declined to interfere in three cases where men killed their spouses or partners and received jail terms of between three and a half years and seven years. A prison term could not be compared with the value of the life lost "because that was priceless", it argued.

The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith QC, had argued that the sentences were all unduly lenient and should be increased to reflect public concern. David Perry, counsel for the Attorney General, told the court that over the past decade a sentence of up to seven years had become "almost the norm".

The court was told that such sentences were not what a "civilised society" expected when dealing with those whose partial defence to taking life was "my partner was going to leave me and I couldn't face that".

But Lord Justice Mantell, sitting in London with Mr Justice Bell and Mr Justice Andrew Smith, said trial judges should be free to consider all aspects of the crime, including the nature of the provocation, when setting a sentence.

The three cases referred – Darren Suratan, Leslie Humes and Mark Wilkinson – were of "uncharacteristic and unpremeditated" violence, said Lord Justice Mantell. "We do not accept that in all such cases a deterrent sentence is necessary or that the sentencing judge is to be regarded as unduly lenient if he concludes that the circumstances of the case do not require it," he said.

But Lord Justice Mantell also said complex domestic contexts of offences could not be used to "excuse" them.