Triple killer Nicholas Prosper’s 49-year prison sentence has been referred to the Court of Appeal after shadow justice minister Kieran Mullan claimed it was unduly lenient.
Prosper was jailed for life with the specified minimum term at Luton Crown Court in March, after admitting killing his mother Juliana Falcon, 48, and siblings Giselle Prosper, 13, and Kyle Prosper, 16, along with weapons charges.
The violence-obsessed 19-year-old was also plotting a mass shooting at his former primary school in Luton, Bedfordshire, purely with the aim of gaining notoriety.
Passing sentence, High Court judge Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told Luton Crown Court that her duty to the public was met with the 49-year minimum term, rather than using “the sentence of last resort” and jailing him for the rest of his life.
Conservative shadow justice minister Dr Mullan referred the sentence to the Attorney General’s Office under the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme on the day Prosper was jailed.
The scheme allows any member of the public to ask for certain crown court sentences to be reviewed, and if necessary the case will be referred to the Court of Appeal.
On Wednesday, an Attorney General Office’s spokesman confirmed the Solicitor General has referred Prosper’s sentence to the Court of Appeal.
The spokesman said: “It will be argued that Prosper ought to have been given a whole life order. It is now for the court to decide whether to increase the sentence.”
Rules were changed in 2022 to allow younger defendants aged 18 to 20 to receive whole-life orders in exceptional circumstances, but none of the orders imposed since then have been on criminals in that age bracket.
The judge said that for defendants over the age of 21, whole-life orders can be considered in cases involving two or more murders with a significant degree of premeditation or planning, or where one child is killed with similar pre-planning.
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said: “The court may arrive at a whole-life order in the case of an 18 to 20-year-old only if it considers that the seriousness of the combination of offences is exceptionally high, even by the standard of offences which would normally result in a whole-life order. This is described accurately as an enhanced exceptionality requirement.
“Despite the gravity of your crimes, it is the explicit joint submission of counsel that a lengthy, finite term will be a sufficiently severe penalty, and this is not such an exceptionally serious case of the utmost gravity where the sentence of last resort must be imposed on an offender who was 18 at the time and is 19 today.”
While Prosper was “indisputably a very dangerous young man”, the risk to the public was met with a life sentence, she said.
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told the court she would not impose a whole-life order because Prosper was stopped from carrying out the school shooting, having murdered his family earlier than he intended after his mother woke up.
He also pleaded guilty as soon as the charges were put to him after psychiatric reports had been completed, and he was 18 at the time of his crimes which is at the lowest end of the age bracket for whole-life terms.
Dr Mullan said at the time: “What exactly does someone have to do in this country to be sent away for life? This was the most serious of crimes – including the murder of two children. What is the point of making provision for whole-life orders if they aren’t used in cases like this? It makes a mockery of the justice system and is an insult to the victims.
“This is the latest in a series of cases that demonstrate too often there is a gap between what the majority of law-abiding members of the public would see as justice and what the judicial system delivers. It was particularly galling to read the judge give to describe as mitigation for the murderer the fact that they didn’t succeed in a plan to kill even more people. What kind of logic is that?”
