Why I am not celebrating the murder of Ian Huntley

There are two reasons I’m opposed to the death penalty. The first is that we risk killing the innocent. The second is that we liberate the guilty. We free them from the far more hellish punishment of life-long incarceration by gifting them the sweet relief of death. This is why I am not celebrating the murder this week of that scum-of-the-earth child-killer Ian Huntley – because the brute who killed him actually did him a favour.

I understand the elation that swept social media upon the announcement of Huntley’s death. He was one of Britain’s most despicable killers. In 2002, he visited evil on to the town of Soham in Cambridgeshire when he laid waste to two precious lives – those of Holly and Jessica, just 10 years old, best friends. Not one tear will be shed for this monster. Even his own daughter has said, ‘Flush his ashes down the toilet’.

And yet we should put away the pom-poms. First because we risk making a hero of the man who killed this killer. It is widely reported that it was Anthony Russell who bashed in Huntley’s head in a frenzied assault at the high-security clink where they were both jailed – HMP Frankland. He reportedly assaulted Huntley with a metal bar on 26 February, leaving him unconscious in a ‘pool of blood’. Then, on Friday, braindead from his beating, Huntley had his life-support machine switched off.

Mr Russell is not your hero. He is a rapist and a woman-killing psychopath. He first killed his own friend, David Williams, after wrongly believing Williams was sleeping with his girlfriend. He then strangled to death Williams’s 58-year-old mum, inflicting 113 injuries on her body. He then targeted 31-year-old Nicole McGregor, dragging her to woodland near Leamington Spa where he raped and murdered her. At his trial in 2022, the judge branded him ‘exceptionally dangerous’ and handed him a whole-life order, meaning he will never walk free again.

If Russell is indeed the killer of Huntley, then this was not ‘justice’ – it was savagery. It was yet another expression of the wicked impulses of that homicidal misogynist. It’s just that this time his target was a man we all hate rather than innocent women. To celebrate the death of Huntley is to celebrate the murderous urges of one of Britain’s other most notorious killers. There was nothing good or righteous about what happened at Frankland. It was obscene violence, killer against killer, the venting of some of the most depraved impulses known to the human race.

Another reason this act should worry rather than thrill us is because of what it says about our prison system. We all know that in a walled-off institution full of crazed criminals, it won’t always be possible to keep people safe. But it should be a top priority of prisons to try. Just last year, also at Frankland, Hashem Abedi, the Islamist monster who helped to organise the Manchester Arena atrocity of 2017, attacked three prison guards with boiling water and cell-made knives. There is clearly a problem at Frankland. Violence in prisons is never a cause for cheering – it’s a sign of rot in the system.

But the key reason Huntley’s death should not enthrall us is because it has let him escape the firmest punishment a civilised society can hand down – lifelong imprisonment, physically, mentally and spiritually. The man who killed Huntley committed an atrocity against democracy, too. For haven’t we decided, as a people, in the democratic way, that we do not impose death even on the wickedest of criminals? In overriding this moral and legal position, and unilaterally selecting Huntley for execution, Russell, if it was him, has insulted the nation itself. He elected himself judge, jury and executioner, elevating his own murderous instincts over the democratic system that we non-criminals live by and abide by. His act was a tyrannical one.

As Dostoevsky said, the punishment of conscience is a far worse one than the punishment of death. Depriving killers of their liberty and forcing them to live entirely alone with the memory of their barbarism is the most unbearable punishment, and in many cases, especially Huntley’s, entirely just. We know how painful this punishment is because there have been reports over the years of Huntley attempting suicide. He was desperately seeking freedom from the judgement of the British people. The nurses and doctors who saved him, and the prison guards who kept a watch for future suicide attempts, were doing right by the nation, ensuring Huntley would continue to suffer our righteous punishment for his atrocities.

His killer has upended all of that. He has freed Huntley from his hell and insulted the courts and the people of this land. Our civilised judgement against Huntley has been arrogantly superseded by an act of savage vengeance. Don’t mourn Huntley, sure, but don’t celebrate that.