The Solicitor General’s bid to have the sentence of triple murderer Nicholas Prosper increased to a whole-life order is due to be heard by the Court of Appeal later this month.
Prosper was jailed for life with a minimum term of 49 years, less 188 days already spent in custody, in March after admitting killing his mother, Juliana Falcon, 48, and siblings Giselle Prosper, 13, and Kyle Prosper, 16, at their family flat in Luton, Bedfordshire, on September 13 2023.
The 19-year-old also admitted weapons charges after plotting a mass shooting at his former primary school in the town.
The Attorney General’s Office (AGO) confirmed in April that the Solicitor General had referred the sentence to the Court of Appeal as “unduly lenient”, with a spokesperson stating that it would argue that Prosper “ought to have been given a whole-life order”.
Court listings show that the case is scheduled to be heard on July 16 at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
After shooting dead his siblings and mother, and stabbing his brother more than 100 times, Prosper hid for more than two hours before flagging down police officers in a nearby street and showing them where he had hidden a loaded shotgun and 33 cartridges near playing fields.
He had bought the firearm and 100 cartridges from a legitimate firearms dealer the day before the murders after forging a gun licence.
Sentencing Prosper at Luton Crown Court in March, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said that she would not impose a whole-life order because Prosper was stopped from carrying out the school shooting, having murdered his family earlier than he intended after his mother woke up.
She continued that while he was “indisputably a very dangerous young man”, the risk to the public was met with a life sentence.
As well as the murder sentences, Prosper also received concurrent jail terms of life with a minimum term of 18 years for possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life, three-and-a-half years for buying the gun and one year for possession of a kitchen knife, to run concurrently.
Rules were changed in 2022 to allow younger defendants aged 18 to 20 to receive whole-life orders in exceptional circumstances, but no one in that age bracket has received the sentence since then.
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said during sentencing that a whole-life term could only be given to an 18 to 20-year-old if a court deemed “that the seriousness of the combination of offences is exceptionally high”.
She continued: “Despite the gravity of your crimes, it is the explicit joint submission of counsel that a lengthy, finite term will be a sufficiently severe penalty, and this is not such an exceptionally serious case of the utmost gravity where the sentence of last resort must be imposed on an offender who was 18 at the time and is 19 today.”
The case was referred to the Attorney General’s Office by the shadow justice minister Kieran Mullan, who said the killings were “the most serious of crimes”.
Public inquiry into Southport murders will ‘identify changes urgently needed’
Comedian Andy Hamilton says he is ‘vehemently opposed’ to Wimbledon expansion
Minister tells airline passengers to ‘work on the basis’ that 100ml remains
Horizon IT scandal final report will be ‘monumental’, says ex-subpostmaster
