Ann Maguire murder: Will Cornick sentence is 'too long', say youth justice campaigners

The 16-year-old schoolboy was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in jail

Will Cornick killed teacher Ann Maguire when he was 15 (West Yorkshire Police)

Youth justice campaigners have condemned the life sentence handed down to the 16-year-old schoolboy who murdered teacher Ann Maguire as too long.

Will Cornick was sentenced to at least 20 years in jail after pleading guilty to killing the 61-year-old Spanish teacher, who was stabbed seven times from behind as she taught a Spanish class at Corpus Christi Catholic College in Leeds in April.

Mr Justice Coulson told Leeds Crown Court he had increased the normal minimum tariff of 12 years because of the nature of the brutal attack and the teenager’s “total and chilling lack of remorse”.

And he warned Cornick that he might never be released.

Ann Maguire (West Yorkshire Police/PA Wire)

However, Penelope Gibbs, who chairs the Standing Committee for Youth Justice (SCYJ), an umbrella group of charities and campaign groups, said the sentence was too harsh.

She told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “We are out of line with the whole of western Europe. There are no other countries within western Europe which give children - and this boy is seen as a child under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and is in the youth justice system - who would give children a life sentence.”

Ms Gibbs accepted that the sentence had to serve as a punishment, but said there was “no evidence” for the 20-year minimum tariff.

She said: “Punishment is also incredibly important, particularly for the victims and families, but the fact is, how many years do we need for punishment? We have given him a sentence which is more than his own lifetime.

"He was 15 when he did this crime and we would say that you don't need that long to punish."

Gibbs went on: “What is crucial is that when he is released he is assessed as no longer being of danger to himself and others and thus we would all be safer.

"But there is no evidence that that takes 20 years and we've looked and we think that this is the longest sentence given to a child in at least 10 years ... I'm not going to tell you exactly what the right sentence would have been, but 20 years and a life sentence is too long."

She continued: "There are very good prisons, there is a prison called Grendon which is a therapeutic community, and prisoners go there for a few years and it has great results.

“The question is - safer society, yes; punishment, yes - but does it need to be more than his lifetime?”

Cornick attacked Mrs Maguire after boasting to friends that he was going to kill her. He also said he was going to murder other teachers, including a pregnant woman “so as to kill her unborn child”, the court heard.

He later told doctors: “I said I was going to do other stuff but I never got the chance, other murders. It was a triple homicide.”

After the murder the teenager told psychiatrists that he “couldn't give a s***” and added: “Everything I've done is fine and dandy.”

In his impact statement, Mrs Maguire's widower, Don, described the killing as a “monumental act of cowardice and evil”.

He said: “There will be no closure. Balance will never return. There will be no level scales.”

Additional reporting by Press Association