A man who murdered his pregnant girlfriend after being released from prison on licence must spend the rest of his life in jail, the court of appeal has ruled after finding that the original 42-year sentence was “too lenient”.
Alana Odysseos, 32, was in the early stages of pregnancy with her third child when Shaine March, now 48, killed her at her home in Walthamstow, east London, in July last year. She died at the scene from 23 slash and stab wounds.
March had been released from prison on a life licence in 2013 after fatally stabbing Andre Drummond, 17, in the neck at a McDonald’s restaurant in south London in January 2000.
He was jailed for life in October last year with a minimum term of 42 years, but after calls from Conservative MPs, the solicitor general referred the sentence to the court of appeal. The government’s lawyers told a hearing on Thursday that March should have been given a whole-life order, which is reserved for the most serious murder cases.
Alana Odysseos was attacked by Shaine March at her home in Walthamstow, east London. Photograph: Family handout/PA
March also challenged the length of his sentence, with his barristers arguing it was “manifestly excessive”.
Lord Justice Edis, sitting with Mr Justice Cavanagh and Judge Robinson, said in a ruling: “The sentence was unduly lenient.
“We quash it, and we quash the minimum-term order that the judge made, and substitute in its place a whole-life order, which means that the offender will never be released.”
On a video link from HMP Belmarsh, March apologised to members of Odysseos’s family. He said: “I just want to say that I am sorry.”
Odysseos was among the women whose deaths were included in the Guardian’s killed women count – a project highlighting the toll and tragedy of femicide in the UK. She was described as a “brilliant mother” who “completely doted” on her daughters.
Alana Odysseos’s mother, Karen Cronin (left), outside the Old Bailey after Shaine March was jailed in October last year. Photograph: Ben Whitley/PA
Jurors in last year’s Old Bailey trial were not told that March had been convicted of murder before.
Tom Little KC, for the solicitor general, told the court in written submissions that March and Odysseos had argued about her pregnancy. In the final hours before the murder, she was heard to say: “I don’t want to kill my baby,” the court was told.
She was later seen outside the property, clutching her right side. Bleeding from multiple stab wounds to her body, she pointed at the defendant standing nearby and shouted: “Shaine stabbed me, he stabbed me. Help, help.”
Sentencing March last year, Mr Justice Murray said the murder involved “prolonged and excessive violence” but that he did not consider the case to be one where “the need for lifelong imprisonment is clear beyond doubt”.
He based this on four factors, including that March sustained a traumatic brain injury when he was a teenager, which affected his ability to regulate his emotions, and that both murders were “apparently spontaneous”.
But Little told the court of appeal on Thursday that a whole-life order was “just punishment” and that there was a “constellation of aggravating features” in the case.
In court, he said: “Properly analysed, this case should never have left the categorisation as a whole-life order case.”
The solicitor general, Ellie Reeves, said: “There is no room for violence against women and girls and I welcome the court’s decision to increase Shaine March’s prison sentence, removing this extremely dangerous offender off our streets and protecting anyone else suffering harm.”
The shadow justice minister, Kieran Mullan, said: “I know Alana’s family are delighted at this outcome and I am very pleased we have been able to help them get the justice they deserved. Though of course I still believe in too many other cases of murder, when a whole-life order would represent justice, very few people get it. So there is more we need to do.”
