Jail terms cut for pair in plot to kill UK singer Joss Stone
Kevin Liverpool, 36, and Bradshaw, 33, had their jail terms reduced by three Court of Appeal judges.
LONDON (AFP) - Two men jailed for plotting to kill British soul singer Joss Stone won challenges against the length of their prison sentences on Tuesday.
Kevin Liverpool, 36, and his sidekick Junior Bradshaw, 33, had their jail terms reduced by three Court of Appeal judges.
The pair had driven to Stone s home with a samurai sword and other weapons, and plotted to rob and kill the singer, dump her body in a river and then flee the country.
The judges upheld Liverpool s life sentence but cut the minimum term from 10 years and eight months to six-and-a-half years.
Bradshaw had his 18-year sentence cut to 10 years.
Judge David Bean said Liverpool posed a "high risk of serious harm to the public" leading to a "clear conclusion that a life sentence was justified".
"The purpose and effect of a sentence of life imprisonment is that if it is never considered safe for the offender to be released, he may remain detained for life, and that if he is ever released it can only be on licence and subject to supervision."
The judge said Bradshaw was "of exceptionally low intellectual capacity".
However, given the reduction in Liverpool s minimum term, a reduction in his accomplice s sentence should likewise be made.
Stone, who burst onto the music scene in 2003 with her platinum-selling debut album "The Soul Sessions", was aged 25 and at home at the time of the planned attack in June 2011.
The bungling plotters were caught out in their battered car when they repeatedly stopped to ask directions near her home in Devon, southwest England, showing passers-by a photograph of the singer.
