Attorney general to review Lawrence jail sentences

BRITAIN’S top law officer is reviewing whether the jail terms handed down to Stephen Lawrence’s killers are “unduly lenient”.

Several formal requests to the attorney general were made after the trial judge suggested he would have doubled the minimum sentence of Gary Dobson and David Norris if the law had allowed.

Members of the public applied for the review within hours of the killers being jailed at the Old Bailey.

The attorney general has no choice but to review the sentence as part of his public interest function. “Anybody can request that we look at the case,” the spokesman said. “We will consider it in the normal way.”

The development came as police assessed new information as part of efforts to hunt down other suspects in the 1993 racist murder.

Scotland Yard has denied claims the investigation was being scaled down, with Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe saying other suspects will not be allowed to “rest easily in their beds”.

Dobson, 36, who is already serving a five-year sentence for drug-dealing, was sentenced to at least 15 years and two months.

Norris, 35, was sentenced to a minimum of 14 years and three months for the murder, which the judge said was a “terrible and evil crime”.

Mr Justice Treacy urged police not to “close the file on catching the rest of his killers after the court heard that a gang of five or six white youths set upon the A-level student in Eltham, south-east London, in 1993.

Police are following up new information they have received since Tuesday’s guilty verdicts.

Detective Chief Inspector Clive Driscoll, the senior officer in the case for a number of years, has said officers would be visiting Dobson and Norris in prison to see whether they would be willing to assist the inquiry and said he remained “optimistic” about further progress being made in the case.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Stephen Lawrence’s mother, Doreen, said of the sentences: “They took my son’s life, so I feel they should be given life with a minimum of 20 years.

“Their age had nothing to do with it. They had the same mindset at 16 and 17 that they probably still have now.

“I would have liked longer sentences but the law is the law.”

Meanwhile, Labour frontbencher Diane Abbott apologised after claiming “white people love playing ‘divide & rule’”.

The shadow public health minister faced demands for her resignation over the remark, made on Twitter. It was a response to criticism of media use of the phrase “black community leaders” after the Lawrence murder trial.

She was rebuked by the Labour Party, which said it was “wrong” to make such “sweeping generalisatons”.

Abbott apologised for “any offence caused”.

She said: “I understand people have interpreted my comments as making generalisations about white people. I do not believe in doing that. I apologise for any offence caused.”