Judge rules Wolverhampton machete attack 12-year-olds cannot be named

A judge has rejected a media application to name two 12-year-old boys found guilty of murdering a stranger in a machete attack.

The pair, both from Wolverhampton, were convicted in June of murdering 19-year-old Shawn Seesahai, who was stabbed in the heart and suffered a skull fracture during an attack in the city’s Stowlawn playing fields on 13 November last year.

They are believed to be the youngest defendants convicted of murder in Britain since Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, both 11, were found guilty in 1993 of killing two-year-old James Bulger.

Four media organisations argued that the defendants, one now aged 13, should lose the anonymity granted under the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act.

Mrs Justice Tipples said the welfare of the youths, who both face a mandatory life sentence, outweighed the wider public interest and open justice principles. Sitting at Nottingham crown court, she said she had accepted evidence contained in pre-sentence reports that naming the boys would have a detrimental impact on their welfare.

The facts of the killing – which “took place in not much more than a minute” – were “of course shocking, particularly given the very young age of the defendants,” the court was told.

She accepted evidence from social workers that one of the defendants was vulnerable, had “extremely complex needs” and that identifying him would have “an extremely detrimental impact on his mental health”.

She also accepted a statement in a pre-sentence report that said naming the other boy was likely to increase the likelihood of negative attention within the custodial setting.

After the judgment, Jude Bunting KC, representing three of the media organisations, said an appeal against the ruling in a higher court was unlikely.

Addressing the court on Monday, Bunting had submitted that the murder was within a category identified during a previous case as having a high public interest. He said: “This point is squarely present in this case, which has attracted local concern and national revulsion.

“We are in the realm of knife crime, which is an issue of substantial public interest.” Naming the boys would also enable the media to investigate the possibility of institutional failures, he added.

Defence counsel Rachel Brand KC and Paul Lewis KC had opposed the media application to lift the restriction on identifying the boys. Brand said the welfare of the boy who is still 12 should be given a “heavier consideration” than public interest factors.

Lewis, representing the boy who has turned 13 since conviction, urged the court to focus on the facts of Seesahai’s killing rather than “siren calls” relating to abstract principles from previous cases. “How does naming two 12-year-olds better inform public debate?” he asked. “There is no evidence that to name two 12-year-olds would provide any deterrent.”

The judge had been told that the victim’s family believed the boys should be named. The application was brought by the PA news agency, ITN, NewsCorp and Associated Newspapers.

The trial in June was told that one of the boys used a machete to slash at Seesahai’s legs and stab him through the heart, while the other reportedly punched and stamped on his head.

Seesahai sustained injuries to his back and legs, a fractured skull and a 23cm-deep machete wound that cut through his right lung, into his heart and nearly came out of his chest.

The youths are due to be sentenced in September.