Appeal court to consider increasing sentences of UK’s ‘youngest knife killers’

The Solicitor General’s bid to increase the sentences of Britain’s youngest knife murderers for the murder of Shawn Seesahai is expected to be considered by the Court of Appeal.

The two boys, who cannot be identified, were given life sentences with minimum terms of eight-and-a-half years for the murder of 19-year-old Mr Seesahai in Wolverhampton on November 13 last year.

The defendants, now 13, were both 12 years old at the time of the murder and were described during their sentencing in September as the country’s “youngest knife murderers”.

They are believed to be the youngest defendants convicted of murder in the UK since Robert Thompson and Jon Venables were found guilty in 1993 when they were 11 years old of killing two-year-old James Bulger.

The Attorney General’s Office (AG0) confirmed in November that it had referred the sentence to the Court of Appeal, claiming it was “unduly lenient”.

Mr Seesahai was stabbed through the heart and lungs and suffered a skull fracture during the attack on Stowlawn playing fields in East Park, with one of the wounds he suffered measuring 23cm deep – almost passing through his body.

Both boys pleaded not guilty to murder, blaming the other for inflicting four wounds with a machete.

One of the youths admitted to possession of the knife before their trial at Nottingham Crown Court and the other was found guilty of the same charge when they were both unanimously convicted of murder in June.

High Court judge Mrs Justice Tipples had ruled the defendants should be protected by anonymity orders, saying their welfare outweighed the wider public interest in open justice and unrestricted reporting.

Sentencing the pair, she said the murder was “horrific and shocking” and that Mr Seesahai had “everything to live for”.

The Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme allows relatives, victims and members of the public who believe sentences are unreasonably low to ask the AGO to review cases relating to several specific serious offences and consider whether they should be sent to the Court of Appeal.

In a victim impact statement read to the sentencing hearing, the family of Anguilla-born Mr Seesahai, who was living in Birmingham, described his murder as tragic, unexpected and senseless, and having been committed “for no reason at all”.

The hearing before Lord Justice William Davis, Mr Justice Bennathan and Judge Nicholas Dean KC is due to start at 10:30am on Thursday at the Royal Courts of Justice.