Chief Justice Richard Ground set legal precedent when he ruled yesterday that child killer Ze Selassie must remain in jail for at least 35 years.

It came in the light of another landmark ruling in the Cooper twins case, in which the Court of Appeal said judges have the power to set sentence lengths for murderers not law makers.

The issue at stake was a section of the Criminal Code which states that people convicted of murder must spend a minimum "tariff" period behind bars before they can be considered for parole.

The Court of Appeal accepted arguments from John Perry QC in the Cooper twins case earlier this year that the mandatory minimum of 15 years in cases of so-called "simple murder" was "unconstitutional and void".

The appeals justices ruled that judges should have scope to set the "tariff' according to the circumstances of individual cases rather than being bound by a mandatory minimum.

Since Mr. Perry's client Dennis Robinson was the man who guarded the door while his accomplice Kenneth Burgess bludgeoned the Cooper twins to death in 2005, they accepted Mr. Perry's arguments that Robinson should serve a lesser minimum tariff of 12 years, not 15, due to his lesser role in the crime.

However, while Robinson had been charged with an offence known to lawyers as "simple murder," Rhiana Moore's killer Ze Selassie was sentenced to "premeditated murder" which is more serious, and attracted a mandatory minimum of 25 years behind bars under the Criminal Code.

Yesterday, Cindy Clarke, the prosecutor in the Selassie case, argued that the landmark Robinson ruling meant Chief Justice Richard Ground could actually fix a period longer than 25 years in the Selassie case.

She argued that a tariff of up to 30 years before parole would be appropriate, as a reflection of the public's "moral outrage" over Selassie's murder of schoolgirl Rhiana Moore. She listed factors including the young age of the victim, the fact that Selassie had sexually abused her while she was under age, and that she was pregnant with his baby when he killed her. However, John Perry QC who on this occasion was representing Selassie tried to persuade Chief Justice Richard Ground that he did not have the power to set a sentence longer than 25 years.

He pointed out that the Robinson ruling did not apply to the offence of premeditated murder, only simple murder.

However, he further argued that if the reasoning behind the ruling was applied to the Selassie case nonetheless, it indicated that judges should be able to reduce sentences, where appropriate, but not increase them beyond the minimum set by law makers.

In the Selassie case, he argued, the Chief Justice could only consider reducing the sentence below 25 years, not increasing it.

He argued that Selassie should in fact get less than 25 years before the Parole Board can consider him for release "since however bad this case may be, it is not the worst case that will come before the courts for premeditated murder".

However, the Chief Justice disagreed, saying that he did not believe 25 years was an "upper limit" that bound him and that the Robinson ruling meant that he was free to impose a term of above or below that.

Listing the reasons why the case was such a bad one, he therefore imposed 35 years.

Mr. Perry declined to comment afterwards whether he will indeed mount an appeal on behalf of Selassie.