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19/07/2006
Coutts wins appeal against murder conviction
Musician Graham Coutts has won his appeal against his conviction for the murder of schoolteacher Jane Longhurst.
36 year old Coutts from Hove, East Sussex, was sentenced to life for strangling Miss Longhurst to with a pair of tights in March 2003.
Five Law Lords said that the Jurors should have been offered murder and manslaughter verdicts.
He was sentenced to 26 years for the murder.
Announcing their decision, the Law Lords remitted the matter back to the Court of Appeal to "invite that court to quash the conviction".
At his trial, the Court heard how he kept the victims body in a storage unit for weeks before it was burned on Wiggonhault Common, West Sussex.
However, the court said his case raised issues of "general public importance" fit for consideration by the House of Lords.
Before Lords Bingham, Nicholls, Hutton, Rodger and Mance, Edward Fitzgerald QC, for Coutts, had argued that there was sufficient evidence of a lack of intent for alternatives to murder to have been offered to jurors at his trial.
(CD)
36 year old Coutts from Hove, East Sussex, was sentenced to life for strangling Miss Longhurst to with a pair of tights in March 2003.
Five Law Lords said that the Jurors should have been offered murder and manslaughter verdicts.
He was sentenced to 26 years for the murder.
Announcing their decision, the Law Lords remitted the matter back to the Court of Appeal to "invite that court to quash the conviction".
At his trial, the Court heard how he kept the victims body in a storage unit for weeks before it was burned on Wiggonhault Common, West Sussex.
However, the court said his case raised issues of "general public importance" fit for consideration by the House of Lords.
Before Lords Bingham, Nicholls, Hutton, Rodger and Mance, Edward Fitzgerald QC, for Coutts, had argued that there was sufficient evidence of a lack of intent for alternatives to murder to have been offered to jurors at his trial.
(CD)
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