A musician convicted of murdering teacher Jane Longhurst will today petition the House of Lords for a retrial.

Lawyers for Graham Coutts, 35, of Waterloo Street, Hove, who strangled Miss Longhurst to satisfy his perverted sexual fantasies, will argue he should get a retrial because the judge who presided over his case did not give the jury the alternative of manslaughter before they retired to consider their verdict.

The same request was made in the Court of Appeal last January.

The judges refused leave to appeal to the House of Lords but said the case raised issues of general public importance which would enable defence lawyers to apply directly to the law lords for permission to appeal.

Miss Longhurst's mother Liz, who has campaigned tirelessly since her daughter's death for legislation banning violent porn on the internet, will be at today's hearing with Steve Dennis, the former Sussex Police detective who led the investigation into the murder.

Coutts kept 31-year-old Miss Longhurst's body in a box in his shed for 11 days before moving it to a storage unit in Brighton for a further two weeks.

The special needs teacher's burning naked body was found on Wiggonholt Common, near Pulborough, West Sussex, on April 19, 2003.

Coutts, obsessed with internet images of necrophilia and strangulation sex, denied murder and argued Miss Longhurst died accidentally when he tied a pair of tights round her neck during consensual sex.