The grandfather of tragic Arthur Labinjo-Hughes has said ‘life should mean life’ for his ‘evil’ killers.
The six-year-old’s stepmum Emma Tustin, 32, was given a life sentence with a minimum term of 29 years after being found guilty of the youngster’s murder.
His ‘pitiless’ father Thomas Hughes, 29, was jailed for 21 years after being convicted of manslaughter.
Both sentences have now been referred to the Court of Appeal for being too lenient, the Attorney General announced this week.
Arthur’s maternal grandad Peter Halcrow told The Sun he agrees with the decision to have the jail terms reconsidered and called for whole life tariffs, adding: ‘Life should mean life in this horrific case.’
He said he ‘never favoured the death penalty’ due to potential miscarriages of justice but added that Tustin and Hughes have ‘forfeited their right to live’ and should die behind bars.
Mr Halcrow told the paper: ‘It will burden taxpayers but, as we don’t have capital punishment, they should certainly never leave prison as long as they live for such cruelty and inhumanity.’
Arthur suffered an unsurvivable brain injury while in the sole care of Tustin at her home in Cranmore Road, Solihull, on June 16, 2020.
The youngster, whose body was also covered in 130 bruises, died in hospital the next day.
Referring the case to the Court of Appeal, Attorney General Suella Braverman said: ‘This is an extremely upsetting and disturbing case, involving a clearly vulnerable young child.
‘Emma Tustin and Thomas Hughes grossly abused their position of trust and subjected an innocent child, who they should have been protecting, to continued emotional and physical abuse.
‘I understand how distressing the public have found this case, but it is my job to decide if a sentence appears to be unduly lenient based on the facts of the case.
‘I have carefully considered the details of this case, and I have decided to refer the sentences to the Court of Appeal as I believe them to be too low.’
A date for the hearing is yet to be set.
The grim circumstances of Arthur’s death prompted an outpouring of grief and rage across the UK and led to the Government announcing a major review into the circumstances which led to his murder.
The trial judge, Mr Justice Wall, described it as ‘without doubt one of the most distressing and disturbing cases I have had to deal with’, adding that neither Hughes nor Tustin had shown any remorse.
He said Arthur had been, at the time Tustin was introduced into his life, a ‘healthy, happy young boy’.
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But less than three months after moving in with her at the start of the first national lockdown, the youngster was left ‘broken’ from exposure to a campaign of ‘acute or prolonged abuse,’ he said.
Tustin was also convicted of two counts of child cruelty, including salt-poisoning and withholding food and drink from Arthur.
She had admitted two other cruelty counts, wilfully assaulting Arthur on three occasions and isolating him, including by forcing him to stand in the hallway for up to 14 hours a day as part of a draconian punishment regime.
Labourer Hughes was also convicted of the cruelty offences which Tustin had admitted but was cleared of withholding food and drink, and of poisoning his own son with salt.
Jailing the pair, the judge said: ‘This cruel and inhuman treatment of Arthur was a deliberate decision by you to brush off his cries for help as naughtiness.’
He added that the couple’s behaviour was ‘appalling’ and at times their acts were ‘spiteful and sadistic’.
The judge called Hughes’ ‘encouragement’ of his partner’s actions ‘chilling’, including sending a text message 18 hours before the attack saying, ‘just end him’.
He added: ‘You were Arthur’s father, in a position of trust, and bore primary responsibility for protecting him.
‘He was extremely vulnerable, and you lied to his school in last days of Arthur’s life to protect both you and Ms Tustin.’
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