LONDON—A 41-year-old man who murdered a six-year-old English boy in 1994 has been sentenced by a judge as if he was a schoolboy.
In what is thought to be a legal first, James Watson, who was 13 when he strangled Rikki Neave, was given the mandatory sentence for a juvenile —detention at Her Majesty’s Pleasure—at the Old Bailey on Friday.
The sentence means he must serve a minimum of 15 years behind bars, minus the 843 days he has spent in custody since his arrest in February 2020.
Watson was convicted of the murder, in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, in April this year. The prosecutor, John Price QC, said he had to be sentenced in keeping with his age at the time he committed the crime (13) rather than according to his age (41) at the time of conviction….