Grand Chamber to hear triple murderer and rapist’s complaint his sentence amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment

The case concerns the complaint by a man serving a whole life sentence for murder that his sentence amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment as he has no hope of release.

The hearing will be broadcast from 2.30 p.m. on the court’s website (www.echr.coe.int).

After the hearing the court will begin its deliberations, which will be held in private. Its ruling in the case will, however, be made at a later stage.

The applicant, Arthur Hutchinson, is a British national who was born in 1941 and is detained in HMP Durham.

In September 1984 Mr Hutchinson was convicted of three counts of murder, rape and aggravated burglary, the trial judge sentencing him to a term of life imprisonment with a recommended minimum tariff of 18 years.

In December 1994 the Secretary of State informed Mr Hutchinson that he had decided to impose a whole life term and, in May 2008, the High Courtfound that there was no reason for deviating from this decision given the seriousness of Mr Hutchinson’s offences.

Mr Hutchinson’s appeal was dismissed by the Court of Appeal in October 2008.

Relying on article 3 – prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment – of the European Convention on Human Rights, MrHutchinson alleges that his whole life sentence amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment as he has no hope of release.

The application was lodged with the court on 10 November 2008. In its Chamber judgment of 3 February 2015, it held, by six votes to one, that there had been no violation of Article 3 of the Convention.

It observed in particular that, in a previous judgment of 9 July 2013, it had found that the domestic law concerning the Justice Secretary’s power to release a whole life prisoner was unclear.

In that case, the Court was therefore not persuaded that the applicants’ life sentences were compatible with Article 3 and held that there had been a violation of Article 3.

However, the Court of Appeal had since explicitly addressed those doubts and held that the Secretary of State for Justice was obliged under national law to release a person detained on a whole life order where “exceptional grounds” for release could be shown to exist, and that this power of release was reviewable by the national courts.

Having regard to this clarification, the chamber concluded that whole life orders were open to review under national law and therefore compatible with article 3 of the Convention.