DOUBLE killer Rickie Tregaskis has failed in a bid to reduce his life sentence.
The 53-year-old was ordered to serve a minimum term of 20 years in August after being found guilty of murdering Barbara Griffin in a frenzied knife attack in her home in 1990 and attempting to murder her elderly aunt Emma Anton.
It was the second time he had faced trial for the attacks, after being cleared of both offences following a Royal Court trial in 1991.
During a Court of Appeal hearing in October, Advocate Rebecca Morley-Kirk, representing Tregaskis, claimed that the 20-year tariff was ‘manifestly excessive’ and that the Jurats had failed to give sufficient regard to the mitigation.
But in a recently released judgment, the appeal court judges – Clare Montgomery, Sir William Bailhache and the Bailiff of Guernsey, Richard McMahon – rejected the application.
As previously reported, the judges also rejected an application for leave to appeal against the conviction.
Advocate Morley-Kirk argued that verdict was ‘unreasonable’ given the evidence.
She also contended that the trial judge, Commissioner Sir John Saunders, was wrong to refuse details about a key prosecution witness, who Tregaskis has long maintained was the real killer, from being aired in court.
Additionally, according to the judgment, the advocate claimed that the commissioner’s summing up was ‘unfair, unbalanced and included a personal attack on her’.
The judgment states that the alleged ‘personal attack’ came when Sir John, during his summing up, told the jury: ‘If you get to… 4.30pm and you think “I’ve had enough, I’ve been listening to two people droning on all day and it’s really been very tiring, so I would prefer to go home and come back fresh tomorrow morning” just send me a note.’
Advocate Morley-Kirk claimed that because only she and the judge had spoken on that day, the commissioner’s remarks ‘would have been liable to make the jury regard her speech on behalf of the defence as having little or no weight’.
But in the judgment, the Court of Appeal said the commissioner’s remarks were merely ‘light-hearted’ and ‘would not have suggested to the jury that they should give less weight to either his summing up or the defence speech’.
Tregaskis, who now has numerous health issues, including multiple sclerosis, and is confined to a wheelchair, was already serving a life sentence when he was sentenced this summer, having beaten a man to death in Cornwall in 1997.
