Arthur Labinjo-Hughes’ evil stepmother tried to kill herself in jail where she is serving a life sentence after torturing, abusing and murdering the six-year-old boy.
Emma Tustin and her ex-partner Thomas Hughes inflicted a ‘cruel and systematic campaign of cruelty’ against his son, which included forcing Arthur to stand for up to 14-hours a day alone, depriving him of food and water and poisoning him with salt.
Tustin was given a life sentence with a minimum of 29 years after she killed Arthur by repeatedly slamming his head on a hard surface.
Hughes, 29, was jailed for life with a minimum of 21 years after being found guilty of manslaughter – but cleared of murder – for encouraging the killing, including by sending a text message to Tustin 18 hours before the fatal assault telling her ‘just end him’.
Tustin and Hughes are among five notorious killers having their jail terms reviewed in a hearing at the Court of Appeal.
Mary Prior QC, representing Tustin at the hearing, said the convicted murderer had twice attempted to kill herself – once by hanging and another by drug overdose – during her criminal trial.
Ms Prior said Tustin made a third attempt on New Years Day, a few weeks after she was sentenced in December last year.
Ms Prior said: ‘Her prison report indicates there been a further episode of attempted suicide.
‘On January 1, 2022, she put a ligature around her neck and the records from prison show she is on the hospital wing and has remained on the hospital wing because of significant fears of suicide.’
The court was told young Arthur faced ‘systematic brutality amounting to torture’ leading up to his death.
The six-year-old suffered an unsurvivable brain injury while in the sole care of Tustin on June 16, 2020.
Tustin and Hughes are appealing against the length of their sentences which are also being challenged as being unduly lenient.
Tom Little QC, representing the Attorney General’s Office (AGO), said Tustin’s case ‘merited at the very least consideration of a whole-life order’.
He said: ‘This was, we accept, not a straightforward sentencing exercise. The trial was plainly a harrowing one for all concerned.’
Mr Little said Arthur was ‘subjected to the most unimaginable suffering’, adding: ‘This was an extremely serious example of child murder against the background of that cruelty.’
In written submissions, Mr Little said the trial judge failed to properly consider whether Tustin’s offences were so serious they required a whole-life order.
He wrote: ‘In the context of sadistic conduct that preceded the murder, it is submitted that murder itself was sadistically motivated.
‘Even if it was not, then (Tustin)’s offending as a whole was so exceptionally serious that it was open to the judge to impose a whole-life order.
‘This was not a case involving episodic criminality before the murder but systematic brutality amounting to torture.’
Hughes, 29, was jailed for life with a minimum of 21 years after being found guilty of manslaughter – but cleared of murder – for encouraging the killing, including by sending a text message to Tustin 18 hours before the fatal assault telling her ‘just end him’
The barrister also said the 30-year starting point for Tustin’s sentence should have been significantly increased.
However Ms Prior, for Tustin, said the sentencing judge took a ‘fair and proper approach in this very difficult case’.
Ms Prior said the ‘toxicity of the relationship’ between Tustin and Hughes created a scenario where they both abused Arthur.
‘At the very least, Thomas Hughes was encouraging Emma Tustin to be cruel, to assault and to ill-treat his son,’ she added.
During Wednesday’s hearing, senior judges also heard challenges and appeals from disgraced former police officer Wayne Couzens, double murderer Ian Stewart and triple killer Jordan Monaghan.
Ex-Met Police constable Couzens was handed a whole-life term last year for the rape and murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard after he abducted her in south London on March 3 2021.
Double killer Stewart was convicted of murdering his first wife Diane Stewart six years before he went on to murder his fiancee Helen Bailey.
Monaghan was jailed in December after smothering his 24-day-old daughter Ruby as she slept in a Moses basket on New Year’s Day 2013. Eight months later he smothered his 21-month-old son Logan, and six years after that he murdered his new partner Evie Adams with a drugs overdose.
The special court of five judges is considering how whole-life orders – handed down in the most serious cases when a judge believes a criminal should never be considered for release – are imposed.
Unusually, the cases are being heard by the same court, one after the other, to produce a judgment on whole-life orders and iron out any disparities in when they are used.