00:01It's really hard to forget the devastating and brutal murder of Emma Lovell.
00:06She was stabbed on the front lawn of her home when she and her husband
00:10were attacked by burglars on Boxing Day in 2022.
00:15The killer, he pleaded guilty to four charges including murder
00:20and was originally sentenced to 14 years in prison.
00:24The original judge, the sentencing judge at the time,
00:27Justice Tom Sullivan described the offending as particularly heinous.
00:32But lawyers for the boy applied to the Court of Appeal for that sentence to be reduced.
00:37Laws at the time in Queensland allowed child offenders to serve 70% of their sentence
00:43or less if they were found to have special circumstances applying to them.
00:48And the Court of Appeal found that that did apply in this case.
00:51The boy was a child, he had pleaded guilty
00:54and had come from disadvantaged circumstances.
00:58And they reduced that sentence to around eight and a half years or to 60% or so.
01:03But today the High Court has overturned that revised sentence
01:07and they've thrown that out finding that the Court of Appeal should not have intervened
01:13and should have displayed some sort of judicial restraint.
01:16So that revised sentence by the Court of Appeal of around eight and a half years or so will be
01:21thrown out
01:21and presumably the 14 year sentence of the original judge will be reinstated.
01:28And of course this is likely to spark political discussions in Queensland
01:31where youth justice and youth crime have long been a focus of politics in the state.
01:37But it doesn't change much for the family of Emma Lovell who have been without their wife and their mother
01:44for four years nearly.
01:46We spoke to Lee Lovell, the husband of Emma Lovell, who was of course involved in the attack on Boxing
01:53Day in 2022,
01:54spoke to reporters in Brisbane today.
01:56You know, I don't believe that 14 years was ever enough to start with, but I suppose I had to
02:01accept that.
02:02So to now get, you know, at least the 70% reinstalled is some validation that, you know, Emma's life
02:09didn't matter.
02:10So, yeah, I still never understand why it's like a, you know, it's a given thing to get 70%
02:15and not that you have to like earn that, if that makes sense, you know.
02:18So, but I suppose like now I just have to sort of make peace with that decision and sort of
02:22try and move on a bit really.
02:25Lee Lovell was in Canberra during hearings earlier in the year facing the High Court
02:31and said that this case was important for justice for Emma.
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