However, in a Court of Appeal decision on Friday, Lord Burnett, the Lord Chief Justice and four other judges said Stewart was “not one of the rare cases” where an order should be imposed for life and reduce his sentence to life imprisonment. a minimum term of 35 years.
In a judgment, they said: “However serious the first murder was, it could not be considered, in isolation from the second subsequent murder, as a crime of exceptionally high seriousness.
“There is no suggestion that, at the time he committed the first murder, Stewart was already planning for it to be the first in a series.”
However, they agreed that it was legitimate to adjust the minimum term to 35 years to “achieve a fair punishment for the first murder and ensure that the overall sentence was proportionate to Stewart’s crime as a whole”.
Stewart’s wife had not had a seizure in 18 years and was on daily medication. Consultant neurologist Dr Christopher Derry estimated her risk of a fatal seizure was about one in 100,000.
During a 999 call, Stewart was instructed to give his wife CPR and said he did, but paramedic Spencer North, who attended the scene, said “there didn’t appear to be any effective CPR “.
Professor Safa Al-Sarraj, a consultant neuropathologist who examined preserved parts of Ms Stewart’s brain, said there was evidence she had suffered from a lack of oxygen before her death, which prosecutors argued was the result of “prolonged restraint” such as choking or grabbing the neck.
Former police officer Wayne Couzens lost his appeal to reduce his life sentence for the rape and murder of Sarah Everard, meaning he will die in prison.