Silvo Drevenšek, the first person in independent Slovenia to have been sentenced to life in prison, has had his sentence commuted to 30 years following an appeal.

Drevenšek stabbed his former partner to death before going next door to murder her parents in the presence of his four-year-old son on Christmas 2020.

He was originally sentenced to life imprisonment but then given 30 years in a retrial before the Supreme Court sentenced him to life imprisonment in March 2024.

In passing that ruling, the court took into account "the defendant's extreme persistence, determination, high motivation and brutality in committing the crimes", the fact that he had planned the act, and the trauma he inflicted on family members, in particular his son.

But now the court changed its ruling. "The first time, the court was weighing whether the punishment was appropriate, while now it decided only on the alleged violation of the law," the court told the newspaper Večer.

It explained that a different panel of judges held that a life sentence or prison sentence of 30 years must be tested at at least two instances and cannot be issued only at the third instance, in this case the Supreme Court.

Slovenia reintroduced life imprisonment to the criminal code in 2008 and Drevenšek was the first and so far the only person to be given such a sentence.

When the country, then still part of the former Yugoslavia, formally abolished death penalty in 1989, it set 20 years in prison as the maximum penalty. This was raised to 30 years in 1998 and it remains the highest sentence imposed.