Ben Butler to appeal against conviction for murdering daughter Ellie

A man who murdered his six-year-old daughter 11 months after the high court returned her to his custody is appealing against his conviction and life sentence.
Ben Butler was sentenced to a minimum of 23 years in jail at the Old Bailey last month after being found guilty of a “brutal assault” on his daughter Ellie while minding her at home in south London.
He claimed during his trial that he had been framed by the “establishment”, alleging that corrupt medical experts and prosecutors were determined to see him jailed because of an earlier conviction for an assault on his daughter when she was a baby.
That conviction was overturned in the court of appeal and Ellie was returned to his care in November 2012 after a protracted high court case.
It emerged on Friday that Butler, 36, had lodged an appeal against his murder conviction and sentencing on 13 July.
During his trial, the court heard he had killed his daughter in October 2013 after battering her in a fit of rage, with the judge describing him as having an “evil temper”.
© PA Ellie Butler was returned to her father’s care in November 2012. Mr Justice Wilkie said in sentencing remarks that Butler was a “self-absorbed, ill-tempered, violent and domineering man” who had “wickedly” involved Ellie’s younger sibling in a cover-up by allowing the child to discover the body lying on the floor two hours after she had been murdered.                   
Ellie had head injuries so severe they were likened by experts to those found in a high-speed car crash.
Her mother, Jennie Gray, was jailed for 42 months for child cruelty and for her part in the cover-up of her daughter’s death.
Butler’s appeal bid emerged during a separate court of appeal hearing in relation to his case on Friday.
The second most senior judge in England and Wales has been asked to decide whether a family court judge’s behind-closed-doors ruling relating to the murder should be made public.
Lord Dyson, the Master of the Rolls and the head of civil justice in England and Wales, will head a panel of senior judges scheduled to analyse issues surrounding publication of the ruling at a court of appeal hearing in London on Friday.
Seven media organisations including the Guardian are seeking access to a judgment made by the high court judge Eleanor King following a private hearing in the family division of the high court in the summer of 2014 – after Ellie had died but before her father had been convicted of murder.
In June a second family court judge refused the press permission to publish King’s judgment on the death on the grounds that Butler might in the future face a retrial.
It is not known if Gray has lodged an appeal.

Author : ᴾᴱᴺᴺᵞᴮᴿᴬᴳˢ

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