A triple killer from Teesside has lost his challenge at the European Court of Human Rights against his whole-life prison sentence.
Arthur Hutchinson, from Hartlepool, was jailed in 1984 for stabbing wealthy couple Basil and Avril Laitner to death after breaking into their Sheffield home on the night of their daughter’s wedding, then killing one of their sons.
The killer - who was nicknamed The Fox - had already spent five-and-a-half years in jail for trying to shoot his half-brother before the murders.
The judgment is the latest development in the protracted legal wrangle over “life means life” terms.
Hutchinson was the first Briton to challenge the sentence after a controversial ruling by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in July 2013 that whole-life tariffs breach human rights.
The Strasbourg-based court held that there had been a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights - which relates to inhuman and degrading treatment - on the basis that whole-life orders were not “reducible”.
The court did not say whole-life sentences were incompatible with the convention, but said there had to be the possibility of a review at some stage and that current laws allowing for release in exceptional circumstances were unclear.
But judges ruled today that in Hutchinson’s case there was no violation of Article 3 as the Secretary of State has the power to review whole-life sentences.
In 2008, an appeal by Hutchinson against his life sentence was rejected.
At the UK’s Appeal Court three judges told him his crimes were so deranged, life must mean life. All three described his case as the most heinous they had ever dealt with.
Teesside double killer Gary Vinter was among several criminals to bring the initial legal challenge against his “whole-life” tariff, saying it breached his human rights.
Vinter was jailed in 1996 for murdering 22-year-old Carl Edon in Grangetown.
He was then jailed again in 2008 after killing his estranged wife Anne White, 40, in Normanby.
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