Wayne Couzens is destined to die in prison after failing in his bid to reduce his sentence at the Court of Appeal.
Former police officer Couzens, 49, was handed a whole life term last year for the rape and murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard, the first time the sentence had been imposed for a single murder of an adult not committed in the course of a terror attack. Couzens was serving as a Metropolitan Police Officer when he 'fake arrested' the marketing executive to kidnap her as she walked home from a friend's house through Clapham, South London.
Couzens pleaded guilty to the kidnap, rape and murder of Everard after he was arrested at his home address on 9 March last year, before her body was found in a woodland stream close to an abandoned leisure centre near Ashford. In May, senior judges heard challenges or appeals against the whole-life prison sentence imposed on Couzens.
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On Friday (29 July), the Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett and four other judges refused to lower his sentence. Appealing against the whole-life term, Couzens’s lawyers argued he deserved “decades in jail” but said a whole-life term was excessive.
However, the judges refused to change his sentence. In the judgment, Lord Burnett said the case involved “unspeakably grim detail” and Couzens had “sought to minimise his true responsibility from the moment he had first spoken to the police.”
He added: “This was, as the judge said, warped, selfish and brutal offending, which was both sexual and homicidal. It was a case with unique and extreme aggravating features.
“Chief amongst these, as the judge correctly identified, was the grotesque misuse by Couzens of his position as a police officer, with all that connoted, to facilitate Ms Everard’s kidnap, rape and murder.”
Lord Burnett said the seriousness of the case was “so exceptionally high that a whole life order rather than a minimum term order should be made.”
He continued: “It provides for its unique and defining feature, which was that Couzens had used his knowledge and status as a police officer to perpetrate his appalling crimes against Ms Everard and for the extensive and extreme nature of the other aggravating features which were present: the significant and cold-blooded planning and pre-meditation; the abduction of Ms Everard; the most serious sexual conduct; the mental and physical suffering inflicted on Ms Everard before her death; and the concealment and attempts to destroy Ms Everard’s body.
“We agree with the judge that having determined there should be a whole life order, given the misuse of Couzens’ role as a police officer and the serious aggravating features of the offending the guilty pleas did not affect the outcome.”
Lord Burnett, sitting with Dame Victoria Sharp, Lord Justice Holroyde, Mr Justice Sweeney and Mr Justice Johnson, said there had been 59 prisoners serving whole life orders as of March 31, 2022, including Couzens.
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