The Oxford University student Lavinia Woodward, who avoided prison after stabbing her boyfriend, has lost a Court of Appeal bid to overturn her sentence.

Woodward pleaded guilty at Oxford Crown Court last year to unlawful wounding at Christ Church college while drunk.

Her case prompted outrage about inequality in the criminal justice system after Judge Ian Pringle QC spared her from jail as he believed it would damage her career prospects.

Woodward appealed against her sentence but a judge at the Court of Appeal denied permission. She then applied to have her appeal heard by a full court of three judges, however her appeal was again denied.

Judge Johannah Cutts said she had been given a “constructive and compassionate” sentence. He said: “We accept that she had powerful mitigation. This nonetheless remained a serious offence which, in our view, merited a custodial element to the sentence.

“It was by reason of the powerful mitigation that the judge was able to take an exceptional course and suspend the custodial term.

“It was a constructive and compassionate sentence.”

The stabbing happened in December 2016 when Woodward’s partner, a Cambridge University student, visited her in Oxford.

When he realised Woodward, who had drug and alcohol dependence and a severe eating disorder, had been drinking, he contacted her mother. 

Woodward then became “extremely angry”, threw a laptop at him and stabbed him in the leg with a breadknife, also injuring two of his fingers.