Georgia: Murderer Appeals Sentence

16 October 2014, 15:02 | Updated: 16 October 2014, 15:05

Two murderers, including one from Shropshire, have asked appeal judges to overturn orders that they can never be released.

Jamie Reynolds, a ``sexual deviant'' who lured a teenage girl to her death, and former soldier Anwar Rosser, who savagely killed a child, challenged their whole-life sentences at the Court of Appeal in London.

Both watched the proceedings in their respective appeals via video link from prison.

After hearing arguments on their behalf, Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas, sitting with Mr Justice Wyn Williams and Mr Justice Sweeney, announced that the decision in both cases would be given ``as soon as possible''.

He said: ``We completely understand the trauma this must have caused the families of both children, but I am afraid it is an inevitable part of the way justice is done.''

The court realised ``how difficult this must be for them''.

The judges had read their personal statements and they would be taken into account.

Reynolds, 23, of Wellington, Shropshire, was sentenced at Stafford Crown Court in December after admitting murdering former head girl Georgia Williams.

Rosser, now 34, who admitted murdering four-year-old Riley Turner in a ``savage and gratuitous'' attack, was handed a whole-life tariff by a judge at Bradford Crown Court in February.

He was staying the night at the boy's home in Keighley, West Yorkshire, in January last year, when he stabbed and strangled the ``happy and bubbly'' child as he lay in his bed.

Stafford Crown Court was told by prosecutor David Crigman QC that Reynolds carried out a ''scripted, sadistic and sexually-motivated murder'' and planned the killing meticulously.

He described Reynolds as a manipulative individual and ''a sexual deviant'' who had ''a morbid fascination in pornography depicting violence towards young women in a sexual context since at least 2008''.

Sentencing Reynolds, Mr Justice Wilkie said he agreed with a psychiatric report that he ''had the potential to progressing to become a serial killer''.

He duped Miss Williams, 17, into going to his home for a photo-shoot, but he killed her - a post-mortem examination showed she died of asphyxia as a result of pressure to the neck, probably caused by a ligature.

Her body was eventually found in a stream in remote woodland near Wrexham.

His appeal centres on the amount of credit to be given in relation to his age and guilty plea.

In Rosser's case, the appeal judges were urged to find that a whole-life term was ``manifestly excessive'', and that instead a ``very long'' finite minimum term should have been imposed.

Both appeals were contested by the prosecution.