The European Court of Human Rights has held that ‘Whole Life Orders’ in the UK do not violate the prohibition on inhuman or degrading treatment, because they are open to review. The UK Court of Appeal released a judgment last year which clarified the review mechanisms for the punishment and which brought the UK position into conformity with the European Convention on Human Rights.
The applicant was sentenced to a term of life imprisonment in 1988, with a recommended minimum tariff of 18 years. Two months later the Secretary of State informed him that he had decided to impose a whole life term. The UK High Court reviewed this decision in 2008 and found that there was no reason to deviate from the Secretary’s decision given the seriousness of the applicant’s offences. The applicant made a complaint under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights based on the argument that a whole life sentence amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment as he had no hope of release.
The ECtHR has previously examined the UK’s practice of whole life orders in Vinter and Others v UK. In a judgment released in 2013, the Grand Chamber found that the law providing the Justice Secretary’s power to release a person from a whole life order was unclear. An automatic review procedure which had been removed in 2003 had not been formally replaced with an alternative and the ECtHR was not convinced that in these circumstances whole life sentences would be compatible with the Convention.
Following the Vinter decision, the UK Court of Appeal delivered its judgment in R v Newell; R v McLoughlin [2014], in which it held that whole life orders were open to review under national law and therefore compatible with Article 3 of the Convention. The CoA underlined that if a whole life prisoner could establish that “exceptional circumstances” had arisen subsequent to the imposition of the sentence, the Justice Secretary had to consider whether such circumstances justified release. This decision would also be subject to judicial review.
The ECtHR considered that the Court of Appeal interpreted and clarified an unclear area of domestic law, in light of the Convention and addressing all of the concerns raised in Vinter. The ECtHR was satisfied that the Justice Secretary’s power to release a whole life prisoner left open the possibility of release where the punishment was no longer justified, and that this was sufficient to comply with Article 3. There had therefore been no violation of Article 3.
Click here to read the full judgment of Hutchinson v the United Kingdom [2015]