If we respect the law, then we must also respect Learco Chindamo's right to be free

If we respect the law, then we must also respect Learco Chindamo's right to be free

Dominic Lawson in The Independent Comment section.

Published: 24 August 2007

John Hirst, the self-styled "jailhouse lawyer" who successfully took the Government to the European Court of Human Rights on the issue of prisoners' votes, has little time for Frances Lawrence. In the wake of her attack on the decision of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal not to deport her husband's soon-to-be released killer, Learco Chindamo, Mr Hirst writes: "If Frances Lawrence still wishes to wallow in self-pity after 12 years, that's her problem."

There's more where that came from. Hirst describes as "an irrational whine" her broadcast complaint that she was "unutterably depressed that the Human Rights Act has failed to encompass the rights of my family to live a safe and happy life". Truly revolting as Mr Hirst's lack of sympathy is, he is right that Frances Lawrence's outburst against the Human Rights Act was irrational. The legislation which appears to guarantee residency rights to Mr Chindamo – an Italian national – is the EU Citizens' Directive of 2004, which was incorporated into British law last year. The Human Rights Act has nothing to do with it.

However, if anyone could be said to have a reason for becoming "irrational", Frances Law-rence is that person. It is not just the circumstances of her widowhood which makes me say that, although it is clear from her television appearance that her mental anguish at the murder of the father of her four children has not diminished in the slightest with the passing of time. She has also suffered greatly at the hands of the state, which has consistently treated her with indifference, bordering on contempt.

This week Mrs Lawrence told the BBC how she had learned from a news broadcast of the decision that Chindamo would not be deported, even though she had been consistently assured by the authorities that he would be removed to Italy at the end of his sentence. Similarly, when two years ago Chindamo was let out on day release, Mrs Lawrence was not told, learning about it from a newspaper report. Worst of all, in 2002, Mrs Lawrence was rung at home by a probation officer who asked her to "apologise" to Chindamo for criticising his lack of remorse. "She was direct and very cross with me," Mrs Lawrence said later. "She said it was because he[Chindamo] would be very upset at his 'lifer board'."

Incidentally, Mrs Lawrence's belief that Chindamo lacked remorse might be entirely rational. He had consistently claimed throughout his trial that the murder had been committed by one of his fellow gang members, on the basis that this unnamed person had stolen his jacket, which was so gruesomely covered with Mr Lawrence's DNA. Once sentenced, he appealed against the conviction. When that was lost, he appealed against the length of his sentence – life, with a minimum term of 12 years before parole could be considered. It is those 12 years which are very nearly up, and the Parole Board has declared, in its usual way, that Chindamo is a "model prisoner". It added that he has passed a number of qualifications while inside, and has attended an "anger management" course.

Forgive me if I sound slightly cynical, but I can't help recalling what the Parole Board had said about Damien Hanson, a young man who in 2004 murdered my wife's cousin only months after being released half-way through a 12-year sentence for attempted murder. Hanson, too, had been a diligent student in prison. He, too, had attended anger management sessions. Nevertheless, let us take the gamble of trusting the Parole Board's assessment of Learco Chindamo. He might indeed be a reformed character. Government ministers have not attempted to criticise the decision of the Parole Board. Their concern seems solely to be with the ruling of the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal, that it would be an infringement of Chindamo's rights under the 2004 Directive, which gives all citizens of the EU free rights of residency throughout the Union.

Chindamo has been in this country since he was five years old and his mother and siblings live here. The Tribunal can hardly be faulted for interpreting the law in his favour: if this causes the Government huge embarrassment, then that is its fault for continuing to reassure Mrs Lawrence that Chindamo would be deported, even after passing into British law a measure which would appear to make such a deportation illegal. It is true that there is a way in which Chindamo, though an EU citizen, could be deported back to Italy.

The relevant directive says that deportation within the EU is permissible if there are "imperative grounds of public security". That, in fact, seems to be the basis of the Home Office's forthcoming appeal against the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal's decision. If that appeal were to be upheld then it would render absurd the Parole Board's decision to authorise Chindamo's release from prison: if, as it argues, he presents an extremely low risk of re-offending then he cannot simultaneously be a great threat to the security of the public.

If the Home Office's position is paradoxical, then David Cameron's is preposterous. While Dominic Grieve, the shadow Attorney General, must surely have told his boss of the legal facts of the case, Mr Cameron continues to blame the non-deportation of Chindamo on the Human Rights Act. This is presumably because the Conservative leader's campaign to abolish the HRA, in favour of what he calls a "British Bill of Rights", has earned the approbation of The Sun newspaper – which is not something he has otherwise managed to achieve.

On Wednesday, Mr Cameron declared: "What about the rights of Mrs Lawrence? We ought to abolish the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights that we can write ourselves." Leave aside the fact that the Human Rights Act is not relevant to this case: can Mr Cameron draft a Bill of Rights in such a way that would guarantee both a Mrs Lawrence's right not to be distressed and a Chindamo's right to live with his own family? I can't imagine how such a clause might read, and I'm certain Mr Cameron can't either.

More fundamentally – and hard though it might be to accept in the circumstances – respect for the law demands that Chindamo's desire to live with his family be respected. If Chindamo has served the minimum sentence set out by the former lord chief justice at the time of his appeal – which he will have done – then he has fulfiled the requirements of the law.

In the moral sense, Chindamo has not repaid his "debt to society" – it's hard to imagine how he ever could, having murdered one of the country's most admired head teachers; but in the strictly legal sense, he can be said to have done so.

He has been punished for his dreadful crime in accordance with the law. If he is to be freed, then he must be a free man.

d.lawson@ independent.co.uk