A mother whose teenage son was killed in last year’s Nottingham attacks has welcomed a “long overdue” review of murder sentencing in the UK, calling it a “pivotal moment”.
Paranoid schizophrenic Valdo Calocane fatally stabbed Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both aged 19, and 65-year-old Ian Coates on the streets of the city in June 2023.
Calocane, 33, was originally charged with murder but admitted manslaughter by diminished responsibility, and was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order.
Mr Webber’s mother Emma Webber told Sky News presenter Jonathan Samuels it was a “huge miscarriage of justice” as she called Calocane a “murderer” and she would “never accept” that manslaughter was the appropriate charge for his “heinous, evil, monstrous crimes”.
On Friday, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced an upcoming study by the Law Commission, saying the way homicide is dealt with had not been reviewed since the early 2000s.
Ms Mahmood said that in the wake of Calocane’s attacks, there have been calls for a change in how “diminished responsibility should be reflected in the classification of homicide offences”.
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(L-R) Ian Coates, Barnaby Webber, and Grace O’Malley-Kumar
All three victims’ families believed they had suffered “a huge miscarriage of justice”, Ms Webber said, adding they “will never accept manslaughter and the use of the system to enable that to fit”.
The law, she said, was stuck between an “arbitrary black and white, you’re either a cold-blooded murderer or, it’s manslaughter and that could be accidental”.
Calocane, she said, “planned what he was doing”, and “chose not to take [his] medication”.
The contradictions, she said, “show how archaic and flawed our criminal justice system is”.
“We ended up in this, the most painful of situations following the most catastrophic tragedy that could ever befall any family.”
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood. Pic: PA
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Announcing the review, Ms Mahmood said the commission “will review the law relating to homicide offences, including full and partial defences to those offences, and this time also the sentencing framework for murder”.
There had also, she said, been concerns about “gendered disparities for murders committed in a domestic context”, including “the inadequate reflection of prior abuse in minimum terms for abusive men who kill their female victims, and disproportionately long tariffs for women who kill their male abusers”.
Tougher sentences for strangulation
The justice secretary said that alongside the review, she would also bring forward legislation to implement two new statutory aggravating factors for murder sentencing.
This will mean judges will have to consider tougher jail terms for murders involving strangulation or when the killing is connected to the end of a relationship.
A consultation into murder sentencing was first announced by Rishi Sunak’s government last year, as part of its strategy to tackle violence against women and girls.
Ms Mahmood said nearly a third of the murder cases analysed by Clare Wade KC, who is carrying out a review into domestic homicide, involved strangulation.
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She said that in over a third of cases, the murder occurred at the end, or perceived end, of the relationship, and that this appeared to be the catalyst for the killing.
Ms Mahmood added: “We anticipate that the Law Commission review will take several years to complete, and the government will then need to consider the recommendations and bring forward any necessary legislation.
“This is the right course of action for such a complex area of law, but it is not a quick one.”
