UK appeals court asked to assess whether sentencing of killer of 3 in Nottingham was too lenient

By PAN PYLAS
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — The British government’s top lawyer has referred to the U.K.’s Court of Appeal the sentence handed to a 32-year-old man with paranoid schizophrenia who fatally stabbed two college students and a man in the central English city of Nottingham last summer for potentially being too “unduly lenient.” Attorney General Victoria Prentis said Tuesday she has asked the court to reconsider last month’s sentencing of Valdo Calocane to an indefinite hospital order after he pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Family members of those killed by Calocane on June 13 — Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, and school caretaker Ian Coates, 65 — argued that he should have been tried for murder.