Lifer says voting ban "infringes his human rights"
A man who raped and strangled his niece has begun a legal challenge against the Government claiming that preventing him from voting in elections breaches his human rights.
If Peter Chester is successful it would lead to every murderer and dangerous criminal in the country being given the vote.
Chester, 54, was jailed for life for murdering his seven-year-old niece Donna Marie in 1977 and has repeatedly been considered too dangerous to be released on parole, despite serving 32 years in jail.
Yesterday, at the opening of a judicial review, his lawyer, Hugh Southey, asked a judge at the High Court to scrap the blanket ban on serving prisoners voting - which dates back to 1870 – in order to make the law "compatible" with the European Convention on Human Rights.
He said preventing Chester from voting was unfair because he had already served the “punitive” element of his sentence – the 20-year minimum tariff laid down – and was only in jail now because of the threat he posed to the public.
Arguing he would be allowed to vote if out on license, he said preventing him whilst he was in jail was an unnecessary sanction for which there was “no reasonable or objective justification”.
BBC report here.
Blackpool Gazette here.
Yorkshire Post's rabid reporting of the story.
A mixture of law, politics, autobiography and humour. Once described as "The Devilish Advocate" (Guardian), I do have the ability to provoke a response. Sometimes it comes from someone who uses a thought process, and sometimes from jerks usually associated with the knee.
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