RE Geoff Carr’s letter about lenient prison sentences (HAS, June 16).

While there are many recent examples of the British judicial system being too lenient on convicted killers I felt that justice was served in the case against Dano Sonnex and Nigel Falmer, who were sentenced to 40 years and 35 years respectively before being eligible for parole for the murders of French students Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez in London.

Let’s hope a similar (if not harsher) example is set when the killers of 17-year-old Simon Everitt, originally from Escomb, County Durham, are sentenced on June 26.

I am no advocate of the death penalty. People have been wrongly convicted before and would again should it be reintroduced, and in certain circumstances murder can be understandable, while certainly not condonable.

However, when a person is so inhumane that they can force a living person to drink petrol and then set them on fire, as in the case of Simon Everitt, they do not deserve a place in our society, incarcerated or otherwise.

As putting them on the end of a rope isn’t an option, let’s hope perpetrators Jimi-Lee Stewart and Jonathan Clarke get life without parole and that female co-defendant Maria Chandler gets a suitably harsh sentence for allowing the act to take place.

M Taylor, Darlington.

TWO decent, outstandingly gifted young Frenchmen died unspeakably in a three-hour orgy of unimaginable horror in London (Echo, June 5).

Their killers, however, escaped whole-life imprisonment tariffs because, according to the trial judge, such a punishment would be too severe on the pair, aged 23 and 34.

What is the mentality of those who devise and administer British justice (so-called)? Do they not have the faintest conception of basic ethics and common humanity?

Apparently not.

Of course, if everyone had their just deserts, Dano Sonnex and Nigel Farmer would now be facing the rope; as it is, in utterly callous disregard for the feelings of the bereaved families, there is every prospect that at some time in the foreseeable future, these two vile creatures will be free again.

What a shocking commentary on our society, and on the people who run it.

Tony Kelly, Crook, Co Durham.

■ Footnote: The Attorney General is considering whether to refer the sentences on Sonnex and Farmer to the Court of Appeal on the grounds that they were unduly lenient.