UK News 24-12-2003 Review of the Year 2003: The Courts who: Soham killer Ian Huntley what: Becomes the most hated man in Britain - WTPS Review of 2003 when: 2003 snippet: The year began with the senseless of killing Birmingham teenagers Latisha Shakespear and Charlene Ellis, victims of a drug gang feud. Within days, home secretary David Blunkett announced a ban on replica guns and a minimum five-year jail term for anyone caught possessing or using firearms. Official figures in January revealed that armed robberies and other firearms offences had rocketed by 35%. Among the more shocking cases of the year, former school caretaker Ian Huntley was given two life sentences for the murder of ten year-old Soham schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. In September, a 48 year-old Kurdish man became the first person in Britain to admit a so-called "honour killing" after stabbing his 16 year-old daughter to death for having a relationship with a Christian boyfriend. In November, 14 year-old Luke Walmsley died after a knife fight between lessons at a rural Lincolnshire comprehensive. And in other legal news, convicted child killer Mary Bell was granted anonymity by Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, president of the High Court`s Family Division, in May. The seemingly unrepentant farmer Tony Martin, jailed for the killing of a teenage burglar, was released from prison. Solicitor Sally Clark, who was jailed for life in 1999 for murdering her babies when they were just weeks old, was freed after a judge declared the murder verdict unsafe. At Reading Crown Court in June, Trupti Patel was found not guilty of killing her sons Amar and Jamie, and her daughter Mia, who all died before the age of three months. [... more]

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