Murderers launch court fight over ‘whole-life’ sentences

Killers David Oakes and Danilo Restivo and the “Bermondsey Beast” rapist Michael Roberts are all subject to “whole-life” orders – which mean they can never apply for release on parole.

Five judges at the Court of Appeal in London were also asked to reduce the 30-year minimum term imposed on a man who was jailed for life after he “executed” a stranger in the street.

Kiaran Stapleton, 21, who labelled himself “Psycho” when he appeared in court, shot Indian student Anuj Bidve, 23, at point- blank range in Salford after crossing the road to confront him and his friends as they passed.

Stapleton, Oakes and Roberts all watched yesterday’s proceedings – before the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, and four other judges – via video link from prison. The judges later reserved judgment in all cases to a date to be fixed.

Rapist Roberts, now 46, terrorised elderly women in a London suburb for more than a decade until he was captured after a cold case review by Scotland Yard. He was jailed in January and told he would live out his days behind bars.

Hair fetishist Restivo, an Italian national who has also been convicted of the murder of a 16-year-old girl in Italy, was given a whole life tariff in June 2011 for the “depraved” murder and mutilation of mother-of-two Heather Barnett, 48, at her home in Bournemouth.

Following his conviction, Oakes, now 51, of Steeple, Essex, who “sadistically tortured” his former partner before shooting her and their two-year-old daughter, was told at Chelmsford Crown Court in May he would never be released from prison.

Lawyers are asking the court to set a minimum term instead of the whole-life orders.

David Perry QC, for the Crown, said it was seeking to “support the whole-life orders made in the cases of Oakes and Restivo”, and the minimum term imposed in Stapleton’s case.

In the case of Roberts it was conceded the making of a whole-life order was “wrong in principle”.

During the proceedings one of the judges, Lord Justice Leveson, emphasised the issue being considered by the court was not about “letting people go”.

Offenders become eligible to apply for parole once their minimum term has expired, but are not released until they are deemed to no longer represent a risk to the public.