Juvenile murder sentence rule doesn't breach human rights, says Supreme Court

Scrapping a law that could have shortened a man's prison sentence because he committed murder as a child was not a breach of human rights, the Supreme Court has ruled.

Jesse Quaye, then 17, and Ayomindy Bile, then 15, murdered Connor Barrett in Hemsby, Norfolk in 2014 - leading to both being jailed for life with a minimum term of 15 years.

But a later change in the law meant Quaye could not ask for a review of that minimum term, because he had turned 18 before he was sentenced.

The Supreme Court's decision to reject his appeal ends the legal battle over juvenile life sentences in the UK courts - but the case could potentially be reopened at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Connor Barrett, 21, died after he was attacked by Quaye and Ayomindy Bile when they turned up uninvited at a birthday party to assault another attendee.

Their trial heard that the pair had brought knives with them and that their victim died in front of his family, including his younger brother.

After their conviction, Quaye, by then 18, and Bile were jailed at Her Majesty's pleasure - the legal term for a life sentence given to child killers.

Under long-standing legal principles, a juvenile who is sentenced to murder can ask for their minimum term to be reconsidered once they have served half of that time.

That policy and other juvenile sentencing laws take into account evidence that some serious offenders rehabilitate in their 20s as they mature.

However, Parliament voted in 2022 to block juvenile killers from seeking a review if they had been sentenced after they had turned 18.

The new law meant Quaye could no longer ask for a review of his minimum term and the 29-year-old remains in prison, prompting him to mount a legal challenge.

Lawyers for Quaye had argued that his treatment amounted to a breach of the ban on arbitrary detention, retrospective punishment and discrimination based on age in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

In 2024, two High Court judges ruled that Quaye's treatment breached those safeguards - but the Court of Appeal later reversed that decision.

In their ruling on Tuesday, the five Supreme Court judges said the law had long differentiated between child and adult killers, and that the trial judge had correctly and fairly decided on a minimum term.

They concluded the ECHR did not compel the UK government to consider reducing Quaye's minimum term.

"The judgement is one of social policy, involving questions of moral and political judgement, which is the province of the legislature [Parliament]," they said.

"Moreover, drawing a bright line distinction based on being 18 at the date of conviction or sentence is a recognised feature of sentencing and the criminal justice system."

Simon Creighton, a leading sentencing law solicitor who represented Quaye, said the case had raised two basic questions of fairness.

"When people receive these particular sentences, they were told that the sentence meant they would have a review," he said.

"To be told a decade later that was no longer the case is one aspect of the unfairness.

"We all know about the lengthy delays in the criminal courts at the moment. And it really is purely arbitrary whether your case is going to come up for trial before you've turned 18 or not.

"To make a decision about what the sentence means, based on something that's so arbitrary and out of people's control, feels like a major injustice."

Creighton said there was a "strong prospect" of asking the European court in Strasbourg to review the outcome.

In general, such cases can take years to be heard and the court only considers appeals when it thinks the courts in the UK have not fully resolved human rights questions.