Overview

• The Court of Appeal dismissed the Solicitor General’s challenge to Nicholas Prosper’s sentence, leaving his life term with a 49-year minimum unchanged
• Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr, Mr Justice Goss and Mr Justice Wall concluded that the enhanced exceptionality test for 18- to 20-year-olds was not met
• Prosecutors argued Prosper’s offences involved meticulous premeditation, from forging a firearms licence to assembling a yellow-and-black ‘uniform’ for notoriety
• Prosper was originally jailed in March for the September 2023 murders of his mother and two siblings and the planning of a primary school mass shooting
• Rules introduced in 2022 allow whole-life orders for offenders aged 18 to 20 in exceptional cases, but Prosper became the first high-profile test and failed to meet the threshold