Bid to increase UK’s youngest machete killers’ sentences to be heard on Thursday

A hearing to decide whether Britain’s youngest knife murderers should have their sentences increased for the killing of Shawn Seesahai will be held on Thursday at the Court of Appeal.

The boys, now 13, were both 12 when they attacked Mr Seesahai with a machete on playing fields in Wolverhampton on November 13 last year, and were ordered to serve life sentences with minimum terms of eight-and-a-half years in September after being found guilty of murder.

The Attorney General’s Office (AGO) said in November that the minimum terms would be referred to the Court of Appeal under the Unduly Lenient Sentence (ULS) scheme.

Judges will consider the case at a hearing on Thursday at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, according to court listings.

Mr Seesahai was stabbed through the heart and lungs and suffered a skull fracture on Stowlawn playing fields, with one of the wounds he suffered almost passing all the way through his body.

Both boys pleaded not guilty to murder, blaming the other for inflicting four wounds with the machete.

One of the youths admitted possession of the knife prior to the trial, while the other was found guilty of the same charge when they were both unanimously convicted of murder following their trial at Nottingham Crown Court.

His killers were described during their sentencing as “the youngest knife murderers” and are believed to be the youngest defendants convicted of murder in the UK since Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, both aged 11, were found guilty in 1993 of killing two-year-old James Bulger.

High Court judge Mrs Justice Tipples had previously ruled that the defendants should be protected by anonymity orders, saying their welfare outweighed the wider public interest in open justice and unrestricted reporting.

The ULS scheme allows relatives, victims and members of the public who believe sentences are unreasonably low to ask the AGO to review cases relating to a number of specific serious offences and consider whether they should be sent to the Court of Appeal.

In a victim impact statement read to the sentencing hearing, the family of 19-year-old Mr Seesahai, who was living in Birmingham, said they were haunted by thoughts of how scared he must have been when he was killed.

Relatives of Anguilla-born Mr Seesahai described his murder as tragic, unexpected and senseless, and having been committed “for no reason at all”.