Wayne Couzens expected to appeal against whole-life sentence
The police officer who murdered Sarah Everard is expected to challenge the length of his prison sentence at the Court of Appeal in early May.
Wayne Couzens was handed a whole-life term in September after kidnapping, raping and murdering the 33-year-old.
He abducted Ms Everard as she walked home from a friend’s house in Clapham, south London, on the evening of March 3.
A serving firearms officer with the Metropolitan Police Service at the time, he had been “hunting” for a victim, used his warrant card and handcuffs to snatch the marketing executive off the street using Covid lockdown rules to make a false arrest.
In October, the Court of Appeal confirmed that an application to bring an appeal against Couzens’ sentence had been lodged.
On Friday, a Judicial Office spokesperson told the PA news agency that the hearing is likely to be in early May, adding that the date is not fixed and may change.
Sentencing Couzens at the Old Bailey earlier this year, Lord Justice Fulford said the circumstances of the case were “devastating, tragic and wholly brutal” and were so exceptional that it warranted a whole-life order.
It was the first time the sentence had been imposed for a single murder of an adult not committed in the course of a terror attack.
The judge said: “The misuse of a police officer’s role such as occurred in this case in order to kidnap, rape and murder a lone victim is of equal seriousness as a murder for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.”
