A teenager who murdered three of his family members will not be given a whole-life order after the Court of Appeal dismissed a bid to increase his sentence.
Triple murderer Nicholas Prosper was jailed in March for life with a minimum term of 49 years.
Lucy Rigby, the Solicitor General, referred Prosper’s sentence to the Court of Appeal in April after barristers told a hearing in London that a whole-life term would be a “just punishment” for the “exceptional” crimes.
However, barristers representing Prosper said the 49-year sentence “cannot be said to be unduly lenient”.
In the ruling, the Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr, sitting with Justice Goss and Justice Wall, said Prosper’s sentence was “itself a very severe sentence for a 19-year-old”.
Carr admitted that “these were undoubtedly offences of the utmost gravity, with multiple features incorporating disturbing, recurrent themes around school shootings”, and said “had the offender been 21 or over at the time of the offending, a whole-life order would undoubtedly have been made”.
However, she added that Justice Cheema-Grubb, the sentencing judge, was correct to conclude that the “enhanced exceptionality test” of whether to pass a whole-life term on an 18-to-20-year-old was “not met on the facts”.
She continued: “Parliament chose to set what is already a very high threshold for a whole-life order for an adult, even higher for a young offender.”
Triple murderer Nicholas Prosper was jailed in March for life with a minimum term of 49 years
Prosper, who is due to be released when he is in his late 60s at the earliest, watched the proceedings from HMP Belmarsh via a video link.
In September 2023, Prosper murdered his siblings, 13-year-old Giselle Prosper, 16-year-old Kyle Prosper, and his 48-year-old mother Julianna Falcon, in their family flat in Luton, Bedfordshire.
An inquest in October at Bedford Coroner’s Court heard that all three victims died from gunshot wounds to the head.
In addition to the shotgun injuries which he suffered, Kyle Prosper was stabbed around 100 times.
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PA | Prosper managed to forge a gun licence and used it to buy a shotgun and 100 cartridges from a legitimate firearms dealer the day before the murdersHe was also sentenced for weapons offences, and having plotted a mass shooting at his former primary school.
During his sentencing in March, a court heard that it was the intention of Prosper to gain “national and international notoriety” by killing as many children as possible at a local primary.
The Court was told he had researched school massacres in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Norway.
He had been able to forge a gun licence which he used to buy a shotgun and 100 cartridges from a legitimate firearms dealer the day before the murders.
Falcon was described as “a keen athlete” who “enjoyed raising money for charity” and was “always putting others first” by a friend to The Sun in September.
Whole-life orders are given only to those who have committed the most serious offences, such as Louis De Zoysa, who murdered Metropolitan Police Sergeant Matt Ratana in 2020.
Kyle Clifford, who last year murdered his ex-partner Louise Hunt, her sister Hannah Hunt and mother Carol Hunt was also handed a whole-life order.
Despite rule changes in 2022 now allowing younger defendants aged 18-20 to receive whole-life orders in exceptional circumstances, no one within this age range has received such a sentence.