Belfast court rejects double murderer Hazel Stewart's bid to have sentence reduced
A panel of judges at the Court of Appeal in Belfast ruled that the sentence imposed on Stewart (62), a former Sunday school teacher, was 'neither wrong nor manifestly excessive'.
Lady Chief Justice Dame Siobhan Keegan told the court that Stewart's latest attempted appeal would have caused 'stress and upset' to the families of those she killed.
She is serving a minimum 18 years behind bars for the killing of police constable Trevor Buchanan (32) and Lesley Howell (31), the wife of her former lover Colin Howell.
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Both were found in a fume-filled garage in Castlerock, Co Derry, in May 1991.
Police originally believed they had died in a suicide pact, after discovering their partners were having an extramarital affair.
Instead, they had been drugged and murdered and their bodies arranged to make it look as though they had taken their own lives.
Nearly two decades passed before dentist Howell (65) confessed to both killings.
He implicated Stewart and she was ordered to serve at least 18 years, at her trial in 2011.
Stewart launched her appeal against the length of her sentence on the basis of fresh psychiatric evidence that suggested she was suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder at the time of the murders and had been coercively controlled by Howell.
Stewart, watched the court of appeal ruling via a video-link from Hydebank Prison.
The judge said the fresh psychiatric evidence had been presented 'well after the event' and 'places reliance on prison records to contradict the case made by all other experts'.
She said: 'Even if there were any traction in the points now made, which we do not find, the trial judge also made allowance for Howell's control in the sentence he passed.
'No injustice arises in refusing to reopen this long-concluded appeal on these facts.'
She added: 'We record this was a double murder of spouses in the cruellest of circumstances.
'Our overall view is that the sentence was neither wrong nor manifestly excessive.
'We refuse leave to admit the new evidence or to extend time as we are not convinced the new evidence establishes a valid ground of appeal.' – PA
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