Jack Shepherd: Speedboat killer has sentence reduced

Jack Shepherd spent 78 days in custody awaiting extradition from Georgia

Speedboat killer Jack Shepherd has had his sentence reduced by almost three months by appeal judges.

The 31-year-old was jailed after Charlotte Brown was fatally thrown from his boat on the River Thames in December 2015.

Shepherd fled the country ahead of his trial at the Old Bailey and was later extradited back to the UK.

The Court of Appeal ruled 78 days he spent in custody in Georgia should count as time served.

Lawyers representing Shepherd argued those 78 days had wrongly not been taken into account as part of an additional four-year consecutive sentence for wounding over an attack on a barman in 2018.

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Shepherd did not attend the hearing earlier, where Lord Justice Fulford, Mr Justice Holgate and Sir Roderick Evans made their decision.

The prosecution did not raise any objections.

Charlotte Brown died on a date in Shepherd's speedboat

Shepherd was convicted in his absence in July 2018 of manslaughter by gross negligence and sentenced to six years. He handed himself in at the Georgian capital of Tbilisi in January 2019 and was brought back to the UK to start his sentence.

After his extradition, Shepherd was also sentenced to a further six months in jail for breaching bail and also admitted wounding with intent at Exeter Crown Court and was sentenced to four years.

The court heard he had struck a man with a vodka bottle after being asked to leave a pub in Newton Abbot, Devon.

Shepherd's boat was found to have several defects

Shepherd and 24-year-old Ms Brown, from Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, had been out drinking and went on a late-night boat trip on the Thames, his Old Bailey trial was told.

He handed the controls of his boat to Ms Brown moments before the vessel struck a submerged tree and overturned, jurors were told.

Shepherd was plucked from the water alive, but Ms Brown was found unconscious and unresponsive.