There are many people in the UK who believe that “Life” for murder should mean just that and, in relation to most cases of murder, I am one of them (but I’m neither a regular Daily Mail reader, nor do I consider myself uneducated). That was the deal the public were told they would get when the abolition of the death penalty was being debated in the 1960s.
In this particular case I may tend towards leniency because of Mr Learco’s youth at the time of the offence. However, fourteen years for such a brutal and unprovoked murder is far too lenient.
To finish answering your question, Mr Rubix, as much as I disliked some of them I most certainly was not disposed to plunge a knife into the body of any of my teachers at 14, or indeed at any other age before or since, so my mindset has not altered over the years.
He has not actually served his sentence, sqad. He was sentenced to Life. My definition of that is until he dies. It is m’Learned Friends who have put a different slant on the meaning, continuing to hand out what are amusingly termed “Life” sentences when in reality they mean about 10-20 years. Their defence of the term is that those released from prison are always liable to be recalled, but I don’t think my dictionary definition of the term stretches that far.
Of course now that Mr Clarke has got his hands on the keys to the prisons we are likely to see murderers spending even less time in prison and there is talk of abolishing the mandatory “Life” sentences for all murders. At least that will be honest and if fixed term sentences are imposed at least the public will know exactly how much a murderer will serve (half the sentence handed down, less any other rebate the Justice Department sees fit to dispense to balance their books).