The sentences of two 12-year-old boys convicted of murdering a 19-year-old with a machete have been deemed unduly lenient and increased by a Court of Appeal judge.
The sentences of two 12-year-old boys who hacked an innocent teenager to death with a machete in a completely random and unprovoked attack were unduly lenient, a judge has ruled. The two boys, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were initially given life sentences with minimum terms of eight-and-a-half years for the murder of 19-year-old Shawn Seesahai in Wolverhampton last year.
But the case was referred to the Court of Appeal after criticism from anti-knife campaigners, and the boys' minimum terms have now been increased to ten years. The defendants, now 13, were both 12 years-old at the time 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 of killing two-year-old James Bulger when they were just 11-years-old. The Attorney General's Office (AG0) confirmed in November that it had referred the sentence to the Court of Appeal. On Thursday, lawyers for the Solicitor General said the sentences of both boys were 'unduly lenient' and should be increased, stating it was a 'particularly serious type of case'. Three senior judges ruled that the minimum terms should be increased to 10 years, meaning the youths will spend nine years and 60 days behind bars because of time already serve
MURDER SENTENCE COURT APPEAL JUVENILE
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