Sentencing decision on Mark Hobson due next year (From York Press)

Sentencing decision on murderer Mark Hobson due next year

8:38am Friday 30th November 2012 in News

QUADRUPLE killer Mark Hobson will not discover until next year whether he has any chance of eventually walking free.

Judges in Strasbourg will announce their verdict in 2013 on an application by three other murderers for their “whole-life” jail terms to be declared a breach of their human rights.

Lawyers for Jeremy Bamber and two others have urged the 17-judge Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights to give a definitive ruling that whole-life jail amounts to “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” banned by the European Human Rights Convention.

Fears have been raised that the case could set a precedent for Hobson, who is serving a “life-means-life” sentence for the murders in 2004 of twin sisters Claire and Diane Sanderson in Camblesforth, near Selby, and pensioners Joan and James Britton, in Strensall.