When is the Government finally going to deliver on enabling courts to order the attendance of offenders at their sentencing hearings?
There are few issues upon which public opinion in the UK is so united, for everyone can see that it is deeply wrong that those convicted of serious crimes should be allowed to stay in their cells rather than face justice on their day of reckoning.
On Tuesday, Kyle Clifford was the latest cowardly killer to refuse to turn up at his sentencing. By doing so he denied BBC racing commentator John Hunt the one tiny scrap of comfort left in his shattered life – the opportunity to read his victim statement in front of the man who murdered his wife Carol and his daughters Louise and Hannah in cold blood.
This was one of the most terrible crimes of recent years, one that began innocently, with a romance between Louise and Clifford.
Mr and Mrs Hunt weren’t entirely thrilled when the couple started dating, but the former soldier was always welcomed into their home.
And when Louise wanted to end the relationship after 18 months, she tried to let her boyfriend down gently. She told him to his face, followed up with comforting texts, did what she could to treat him with respect.
Clifford responded to being dumped by creating utter carnage in the family home in Bushey, Hertfordshire. He stabbed Carol to death, raped and then killed Louise before murdering her sister Hannah with a crossbow.
John Hunt has somehow to live with the fact that not only are his wife and two of his three daughters dead, but also that they died violently, in terror and pain. Justice becomes incredibly important to the bereaved and to victims of crime, because in many cases – as in this one – it is all they have left.
Clifford, above, could have been wheeled in to court like a side of bacon, like the blot upon humanity he is
John Hunt has somehow to live with the fact that not only are his wife and two of his three daughters dead, but also that they died violently, in terror and pain
Clifford is now in a wheelchair and paralysed from the waist down after a botched attempt at killing himself with the crossbow following his murderous spree. He would hardly have to be wrestled into court by burly enforcers.
He could have been wheeled in like a side of bacon, like the blot upon humanity he is – but the judge, Mr Justice Joel Bennathan, declined to force him to do so, or even to appear by video link from Belmarsh Prison.
‘The idea of a man in a wheelchair being put in restraints and potentially disrupting these proceedings … is simply not appropriate or suitable,’ he told the court.
This meant John Hunt and surviving daughter Amy Hunt – who had written their victim impact statements directly addressing Clifford – had to deliver their remarks in the killer’s absence.
Other killers who have refused to attend their sentencing hearings include Southport killer Axel Rudakubana, who was removed from his own sentencing for repeatedly shouting, in what the judge said was a bid to avoid facing the victims of his crime.
Plus Thomas Cashman, who killed nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel as he chased a drug dealer in Liverpool in 2022; and Jordan McSweeney, who killed law graduate Zara Aleena as she walked home from a night out in East London in the same year.
The upcoming Victims, Courts and Public Protection Bill promises to give judges new powers to force criminals into the dock when they are sentenced, but what happens if some judges – like Mr Justice Bennathan – decide not to use them because they fear disruptions in court?
Personally, I don’t believe those who have taken away the most basic human right of others – the right to live – should be given any rights of their own at all in this matter. Gagged, shackled, stretchered in or trussed up like a turkey, they should be made to appear in court to hear their fate.
A change in procedure was mooted following Lucy Letby’s first trial at Manchester Crown Court in 2023.
After being found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill seven more, she refused to turn up for her sentencing, greatly adding to the distress of the bereaved parents who had endured the long months of this gruelling trial.
The mother of two of Letby’s victims said the neonatal nurse’s no-show was ‘just one final act of wickedness from a coward’ and it is hard to argue with that.
Since then, there has been growing controversy over Letby’s conviction amid questions over the medical evidence used to secure it, but I have never doubted her guilt.
Not just because of the ‘I am evil, I did this’ note found in her possession. Nor the fact that she had taken home more than 250 nursing handover sheets relating to some of the babies who collapsed or died – and hidden them under her bed.
Not even that she had written the initials of triplets in her diary on the day they died or that the doomed children always, always, always fell ill when Letby was left alone with them.
All of this is damning enough, thunderously so, but the fact that Lucy Letby refused to appear in court to hear Mr Justice Goss hand down her life sentences and say that there was ‘a deep malevolence bordering on sadism’ in her actions, tells its own story of shame and culpability.
Surely if you were not guilty of these terrible crimes you would take every opportunity to protest your innocence, not hide away in jail, like a slug under a rock.
Kyle Clifford also took the snivelling slug option. He didn’t have the courage to go to court and hear a judge sentence him to a whole life order for the triple murder he committed, or listen to John Hunt promise him that ‘the screams of hell’ awaited him and that his ‘miserable fate will last for eternity’.
All this is undoubtedly true, but how one wishes this brave and dignified man had been allowed to say it to Clifford’s face.
Oh dear, Gwynnie’s in Girlfriend Jail…
In her new memoir Say Everything, actress Ione Skye gets all upset about Gwyneth Paltrow, above, claiming the Goop guru is a ‘mean girl’. Ione rather preposterously claims that Gwynnie was ‘not nice’ to her brother Donovan Leitch when they dated back in the 1990s. Apparently, the sainted Gwynnie once laughed and called Donovan an ‘idiot’ for spilling a glass of water over her. On another occasion she failed to be sympathetic enough when Donovan had a cold. Good grief. If that is truly being mean then we’d all be banged up in Girlfriend Jail or serving a long sentence in the Correctional Facility For Not Nice Wives.
Sex, drugs … the normal rules just don’t apply in rock’n’roll
More damning revelations in her new book reveal Ione Skye’s toxic relationship with Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis. He was 24 when they began dating, while she was only 16.
The actress claims that when she was 17 years old, Kiedis got her pregnant then paid for her abortion. ‘I would not have a baby at 17, with someone who didn’t want to be a dad, wouldn’t commit to me and had anger issues. Not to mention the heroin,’ she writes.
No, Kiedis (pictured with Skye) is not exactly Mr Wholesome.
In his own autobiography Scar Tissue, he admits to having sex with a girl who was only 14 years old, both before and after he knew her age. He was 23 at the time.
Anthony Kiedis with Ione Skye, who says the pair had a toxic relationship in their youth
The rocker also has convictions for indecent exposure and sexual battery relating to an incident in 1989.
Yet none of this has halted his progress, nor stopped him selling records, playing in stadiums, being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, starring in a Marc Jacobs ad campaign or even dating Spice Girl Melanie Chisholm, which he did in 1998.
If Kiedis were a politician or a prince, he would have been hounded out of public life, but he seems to get away with everything and anything. It seems that different rules apply to musicians. Just ask Ione Skye. Her own father, the folk singer Donovan, more or less abandoned her at birth and has been an absent figure in her life.
‘I still don’t really know him,’ she says.
Thanks for nothing, Nicola
Following my Scottie dog joke last week, Nicola Sturgeon, above, has resigned from politics. She’s had enough. She can’t cope with people like me comparing her to a Scottie because they are both hairy wee terriers who have fallen out of favour with the public, but it is true. The former First Minister is to stand down as an MSP after a decade on the front line of Scottish politics and I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Nicola on her willow-weaving skills. For Scotland is now a complete basket case – and it’s all thanks to her. Education is failing, the health service is failing and the fact that Scotland has the highest drug death rate in Europe hasn’t stopped the introduction of luxury drug suites where addicts can shoot up in comfort. Not everything is her fault, except it is.
Spare a thought for NASA’s two stuck astronauts, whose rescue mission has been delayed yet again.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have spent the past nine months whirling around space, trying to keep space calm and carry on, while washing their space smalls in the space sink and resisting the temptation to bang on the space door screaming: ‘Let me out!’
The pair left Earth in June last year, expecting to return in only eight days. Yet technical problems have kept them anchored in the space station with their astro-colleagues for what must seem like a century.
How do they cope with the claustrophobia, the enforced seclusion and, most of all, the effects of gravity on Suni’s hair, which floats around her head like a mad, glorious dandelion?
I think it would eventually get up my nose, metaphorically and physically. Oh, the horror of it all. Please can someone bring them back to Earth soon.
Baton attack: an accident, or moment of madness?
U.S High School athletics star Alaila Everett has been charged with assault and battery following an incident during a relay race in Virginia. She appeared to hit Kaelen Tucker on the head with the baton after the rival runner overtook her. In a tearful television interview, Everett claimed it was an accident.
‘Everybody has feelings. So, you are physically hurt but you are not thinking about my mental [sic], right?’ she said. ‘My baton got stuck behind her back … and it rolled up her back. I lost my balance and when I pumped my arms again, she got hit.’
Can you find a drop of sympathy for a young athlete who has thrown away her sporting career in a moment of madness? Or do you feel the charges are justified?
Yes, many of us are indeed thinking about Alaila’s ‘mental’ – but are unable to forget what we clearly saw in a video clip that has been watched by millions. Something that looked very much like a deliberate attack.
