The Death Penalty should have been brought back and shame on England for not doing so.
This man should have been dead long ago.
Ian Huntley sues for £100,000: Soham killer claims compensation for being attacked in prison... and final bill to taxpayer could be £1m
By Paul Sims
The Daily Mail
31st July 2010
Soham murderer Ian Huntley should drop his claim for £100,000 compensation after he had his throat slashed by another inmate and be grateful the death penalty was no longer in force, a leading victims' campaigner said today.
Huntley has launched legal proceedings against the prison service for failing in their duty of care towards him after the attack in March this year.
The double child-murderer is almost certain to receive legal aid to fight his case, which could cost the taxpayer over £1million.
He is believed to be seeking £20,000 for his injuries and a further £60,000 in punitive damages as he believes the authorities should have done more to protect him.
Separately to suing the prison, he is expected to claim compensation – thought to be up to £15,000 – through the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority.
Norman Brennan, the founder of the Victims of Crime Trust, said: 'If Huntley had the slightest remorse for the terrible murder of these two girls he would drop the case immediately and get on with serving his sentence, and just be thankful it's not pre-1967 when he may well have been sentenced to the hangman's noose.'
Mr Brennan, 51 and now retired from the police, said inmates convicted of such heinous crimes should forfeit their right to sue.
'Yet again, the true victims in this - the parents of Holly and Jessica - are reminded of their tragic loss as a result of an offender attempting to seek compensation.'
The prison service said today it was ‘vigorously defending’ the claim.
But there is a growing belief that Huntley – serving life for the murders of ten-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002 – will be paid off.
Under the previous government, the then Justice Secretary Jack Straw said he had ‘absolutely no intention of paying Huntley compensation.'
But legal sources estimate that any potential court case could be hugely embarrassing to the authorities.
A source told the Mail: ‘They will try to settle this out of court if they can. They won’t want to fight this out in a public arena with the interest there is in Huntley.
‘For starters it will be incredibly costly to the public purse and a logistical nightmare. Worse still, having endured a public hearing, what happens if they lose? It would be far cheaper to simply pay him off.’
If successful, Huntley could receive a total of £95,000 – nearly ten times the amount paid out to the parents of the former school caretaker’s victims after the murders in Soham, Cambridgeshire.
The families received just £11,000 each from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority because the financial impact of the death of a child is not considered as serious as an injury to an adult.
Huntley was left scarred for life after the attack at high-security Frankland prison in Durham.
He was apparently ambushed by convicted robber Damien Fowkes, who is alleged to have slashed his throat with a razor blade melted into a toothbrush.
The blade missed Huntley’s jugular by only an inch and is believed to have left significant scarring.
Fowkes, 34, a crack addict serving life for a knifepoint robbery, is believed to have pretended to be suicidal in order to get closer to the hospital kitchens – where Huntley was working – in a bid to kill the Soham murderer.
Prison officers smashed their way in to the barricaded room after hearing Huntley’s screams and discovered the killer lying on the floor in a pool of blood.
Fowkes is said to have shouted: ‘He had it coming. I want everybody to know me as the guy who killed Ian Huntley.’
Huntley was immediately taken to hospital and after three hours was released for further treatment in the jail’s medical wing. He has suffered a string of serious assaults from other inmates since his conviction in 2003, despite spending much of his sentence in solitary confinement.
In one incident he was left with serious burns after boiling water was tipped over him.
In another he narrowly escaped being stabbed and was badly beaten. He will claim that because of his high-profile status in prison and previous attacks on him by other inmates he should have been better protected.
Mark Leach, editor of the Prisons Handbook, explained: ‘The court can impose these damages on the basis that this has happened to Huntley before and for whatever reason the prison service hasn’t learnt from it. It becomes punitive, not compensatory.’
Mr Leach said it would be harder for Huntley to succeed in his claim for compensation through the CICA because of a clause that enables them to withhold any pay-out on the basis of the applicant’s character and past crimes.
If Huntley is awarded damages, it is likely he will ask for it to be paid into his prison bank account. From that he will be allowed to draw an extra £50 a month on top of his prison wages to spend as he sees fit.
Huntley arrived at Frankland from Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire in 2008 after a suicide attempt and was immediately assigned a two-man guard whenever he ventured out of his cell.
Just a week before Fowkes’s attack, three prison officers there were stabbed by an inmate wielding a shard of glass and last night, campaigners compared their likely treatment to Huntley’s.
Colin Moses, president of the Prison Officers Association, said: ‘It’s regrettable when anyone is attacked in prison but let’s remember what our soldiers are receiving when they are injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
‘The prison officers attacked in Frankland a week before will have to fight tooth and nail for any sort of compensation, yet it will almost certainly be served up on a plate for Ian Huntley.’
Juliet Lyon, of the Prison Reform Trust, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'The duty of care that prison staff have is a difficult one, but it is to hold people safely and securely, regardless of what they have done.
'The issue of compensation is a much more complicated one, but the issue of safety and security is a bedrock one... If a court sentences someone to custody, they are not sentencing them to be attacked.
'We have to expect that our prisons are going to be safe, secure places.
'If that breaks down, if the staff aren't able to hold that line, it is then up to the individual to pursue any means they are able to.'
Ms Lyon said that notorious inmates often had to be kept separate from other prisoners for their own safety.
'With very high-profile cases, quite often people are held separately,' she said. 'They require a lot of extra supervision, with high numbers of staff if there is any locking or unlocking to be done.
'Undoubtedly, it's a very difficult thing to manage for staff working in an overcrowded system who get eight weeks' basic training. It's a very tall order.
'We have to look to ministers to be absolutely clear with the staff that they expect nothing less than a safe, secure system.'
Last night, a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said: ‘Ian Huntley is bringing a claim against the Ministry of Justice following an assault by another prisoner.
'The claim is currently being vigorously defended.’
killers
Subscribe To
Posts
Comments