THE sentence given to a man who choked a woman to death during sex was unduly lenient, the Attorney General has said.
Sam Pybus, 32, was jailed for four years and eight months after admitting the manslaughter of Sophie Moss, 33, at her home in Darlington in February.
Labour MP Harriet Harman had asked for the sentence to be reviewed saying it "did not reflect the gravity of the crime".
The Attorney General said the Court of Appeal would now decide whether to increase the sentence.
Teesside Crown Court heard how Pybus drove to the mother-of-two's Darlington flat after his wife had gone to bed and he had drunk 24 bottles of lager.
Within minutes of arriving at Miss Moss' flat Pybus had choked her to death.
The court heard how he sat in his car for 15 minutes before driving to a police station to admit choking her unconscious during 'rough sex'. Paramedics were unable to save her life.
Speaking after the sentencing, Daniel Parkington, the father of Sophie Moss' children, spoke of the devastating impact of having to try to protect their children from learning the truth of their mother's death.
And when he learned of the length of the sentence, he simply said: "What world do these people live in?"
In a passionate victim impact statement, Miss Moss' brother, James, said: “We will never be able to shake the belief that whatever the nature of their relationship, and her role in it, that she was a victim – taken advantage of and exploited - and was subjected to an entirely avoidable an infinitely tragic end."
A spokesperson for the Attorney General said: "I can confirm that the Attorney General has referred Sam Pybus' sentence to the Court of Appeal as she agrees that it appears unduly lenient.
"It is now for the court to decide whether to increase the sentence."
Ms Harman said Pybus' "disgraceful mitigation" that Ms Moss, a mother of two young boys, encouraged strangulation during sex made it sound as if it was "her fault".
Sedgefield MP Paul Howell, whose constituency includes Pybus' Middleton St George address, also wrote to Solicitor General Lucy Frazer to ask her to use her powers to refer this case to the Court of Appeal as an ‘Unduly Lenient’ sentence.
Pybus, of Water View, Middleton St. George, Darlington, was charged with murder but the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has accepted his plea of guilty to manslaughter.
At the time of the sentencing, the CPS said it did not merely accept Pybus’s word that he did not intend to cause the 33-year-old serious harm – there was insufficient evidence to prove it.
Judge Paul Watson QC, the Recorder of Middlesbrough, sentenced Pybus to four years and eight months.
He said: "I find that this was a case in which you were voluntarily intoxicated, unable to judge the situation and perhaps to have stopped when it was obvious that you had gone too far."
The sentence caused outrage amongst campaigners who hit out at the use of the 'rough-sex' excuse.
Dr Charlotte Proudman, an award-winning barrister and specialist in gender-based violence, said: "Although this isn't a defence as such set out in law it is certainly becoming more commonplace for male killers to use this defence when they kill women. I say that because there is not one case, as I understand, in this country where a woman has killed a man because of rough sex.
"What we know is that over 60 women whose killers have been men and used this defence. It is very much a gender crime used by men to excuse their violence and some of the most hideous abuse such that they lose their lives.
"In my view, it is completely wrong that the courts even acknowledge that this can be used to mitigate the violence that is being used on a regular basis."
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