MURDER: END OF LIFE SENTENCES; US-Style Legal Shake-Up Is Blasted as 'Licence to Kill'

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Byline: By ROSA PRINCE Political Correspondent

MURDERERS will no longer receive an automatic life sentence under plans revealed yesterday.

In a radical and controversial shake-up, lawyers want to split their crime into new US-style offences of Murder One and Murder Two and manslaughter.

They hope this will ensure those who kill in cold blood will get tougher sentences, but many victims' families say it gives criminals a licence to kill.

They are outraged by a proposal that killers who intend to cause "serious harm" but not death will be treated as second degree murderers and will no longer face mandatory life sentences.

Norman Brennan, of the Victims of Crime Trust, said: "These proposals will result in shorter sentences and it will be seen by a number of criminals as a licence to murder."

Shopkeeper Victor Bates, 66, whose wife Marian, 64, was gunned down in the family's jewellery shop in Arnold, Notts, in 2003, said: "There isn't a criminal out there who isn't …