Constance Marten given permission to appeal sentence for manslaughter of baby

Aristocrat Constance Marten has been granted permission to appeal the 14-year jail sentence she was handed for her newborn baby’s death.

Marten, 39, and her partner, convicted rapist Mark Gordon, 52, were in hiding when their baby daughter Victoria died in a tent on the South Downs in January 2023.

The couple had fled authorities to prevent Victoria being taken into care, as her four other siblings had been before, their Old Bailey trial was told.

Marten and Gordon were found guilty of her manslaughter, child cruelty, concealing the birth of a child and perverting the course of justice following two trials spanning six months each.

Judge Mark Lucraft KC jailed them both for 14 years and handed Gordon a further four years on extended licence.

Marten has now been granted permission to appeal her sentence, and renewed her application for permission to appeal her gross negligence manslaughter conviction.

A court date is yet to be set.

Judge Lucraft accepted the prosecution’s case that baby Victoria died from hypothermia after being exposed to “significant cold stress”.

He rejected the defendants’ claims that Victoria was smothered in a “terrible accident” as they slept in the tent.

The offending was made worse because the baby was vulnerable and the defendants failed to listen to past warnings, he said.

In a televised sentencing, Judge Lucraft told the defendants: “It is clear throughout the period neither of you gave much or any thought for the care or love for your baby.”

The judge said that the couple had displayed “arrogance” and treated Victoria to “neglect of the most serious type”.

Police had launched a nationwide hunt after the couple’s car burst into flames on a motorway near Bolton, Greater Manchester, on 5 January 2023.

A placenta was among the items found in the burnt-out wreck, their trial heard.

The defendants travelled across England and went off-grid, sleeping in a tent on the South Downs where baby Victoria died days later.

After seven weeks on the run, the defendants were arrested in Brighton.

After a desperate search, police found their baby dead amid rubbish inside a Lidl bag in a disused shed nearby.