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Court of Appeal Rejects "Yorkshire Ripper" Peter Sutcliffe's Challenge to His Whole-Life Term

Three judges led by the Lord Chief Justice said his crimes were "at the extreme end of horror." Two months later the court blocked a bid to go to the Supreme Court.

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Peter Sutcliffe in later life, gray-bearded and wearing a cap, photographed outdoors

Peter Sutcliffe, the "Yorkshire Ripper," challenged a 2010 ruling that he must never be released. On January 14, 2011, the Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal.

Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice, sitting with Mr Justice Calvert-Smith and Mr Justice Griffith Williams, upheld the whole-life order made by Mr Justice Mitting on July 16, 2010. Sutcliffe, 64, had been convicted at the Central Criminal Court on May 22, 1981, of 13 murders and received 20 life sentences. His lawyer argued that his mental disorder justified a finite minimum term. Lord Judge said the offenses as a whole showed "criminal conduct at the extreme end of horror," and that Sutcliffe's claim to have acted on divine instruction carried no greater conviction than when the jury rejected it. The interests of justice, the judges ruled, required "nothing less" than a whole-life order.

Sutcliffe, now known as Peter Coonan, was held at Broadmoor high-security hospital, where he had been transferred from prison in 1984. On March 9, 2011, the Court of Appeal refused to certify a point of general public importance, ending his bid to take the case to the Supreme Court.

A BBC report on the January 2011 ruling dated the High Court's whole-life order to 2009, while the Court of Appeal's judgment and a later BBC report dated it to July 2010.

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