Judges quash 'whole-life' sentence for builder who murdered three generations of same family

Mandy Power, 34, her bed-ridden mother Doris Dawson, 80, and her daughters Katie, 10, and Emily, eight, were found dead by firefighters at their home in Clydach, near Swansea, in June 1999.

David Morris, 44, of Craig-cefn-Parc in the Swansea Valley, who beat all four to death with a pole before setting the house on fire, was convicted for the second time in August last year following a retrial at Newport Crown Court.

The trial judge, Mr Justice McKinnon, sentenced him to life for each of the four murders, telling Morris that "life imprisonment should mean imprisonment for the rest of your life".

But three judges at the Court of Appeal in London quashed the whole-life term, making an order that he should serve a minimum period of 32 years before he can apply for release on parole.

They had earlier rejected an application by Morris for leave to appeal his convictions, ruling there was no "arguable" ground for a challenge.

Morris's original convictions from Swansea Crown Court in 2002 were quashed on appeal in 2005 when a second trial was ordered.

Sir Igor Judge, sitting with Mr Justice Elias and Mr Justice Griffith Williams, said Mr Justice McKinnon had concluded that it was a case for "what is described as a whole-life sentence".

But Sir Igor said that a courts' sentencing powers on a retrial were "constrained by statute" in that a penalty imposed on a defendant following a retrial must not be harsher than that imposed on him after the first trial.

He said that at the conclusion of the first trial the judge, Mr Justice Butterfield, had recommended a minimum of 35 years.

The then Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, had reviewed all the papers and concluded that the recommended period should be 32 years.

After the jury's guilty verdicts last year, Mr Justice McKinnon spoke of the "exceptional savagery" of the murders.