The mother and father of a teenage girl murdered by her ex-boyfriend have misplaced their appeal to extend her killer’s sentence.
Thomas Griffiths, 18, stabbed Ellie Gould, 17, to demise at her house in Wiltshire in May, earlier than trying to cowl his tracks by making it seem as if she had taken her personal life.
In November, he was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimal time period of 12 years and 6 months, after he admitted the killing.
Ellie’s mother and father have since utilized to the legal professional basic to refer the case to the Court of Appeal underneath the unduly lenient sentence scheme, claiming Griffith’s preliminary sentence was “not justice” for his or her daughter.
But on Friday the legal professional basic’s workplace mentioned that the brink to refer a case had not been met, and wouldn’t be taken ahead.
A spokeswoman mentioned a referral to the Court of Appeal can solely be made “if a sentence is not only lenient however unduly so, such that the sentencing choose made a gross error or imposed a sentence exterior the vary of sentences fairly accessible within the circumstances of the offence.
“The threshold is a high one, and the test was not met in this case.”
Talking about Griffith’s sentence in a BBC interview after the trial, Mrs Gould mentioned: “We have been devastated when the sentence was handed down and really feel utterly let down by the British justice system.
“It simply would not appear proper {that a} younger girl might be sitting at house revising for her A-levels and any person can are available and brutally homicide her – and the perpetrator’s punishment is 12 and a half years.
“How is that ever, ever justice?”
Ellie was killed by Griffiths when he put his palms round her neck, then stabbed her at the very least 13 instances.
He then positioned the knife in her left hand, to give the impression she had killed herself, earlier than leaving the home. He later dumped a bag of blood stained garments within the woods, and went again to the college they each attended.
His attorneys advised the court docket that he had been “presented with a series of stressful life events,” which included household diseases and examination worries.
Ellie’s father returned house from work at 3pm to uncover her physique within the kitchen.
The choose, Mr Justice Garnham, advised Griffiths in sentencing: “There can be no more dreadful scene for any parent to contemplate than that which confronted Ellie’s father when he came home that day from work.”
