Don’t give the vote to my son’s killer

Jenny Singleton spoke out as ministers were poised to surrender in a long-running legal battle with the European Court of Human Rights.

Mrs Singleton, whose son Lewis, 18, was stabbed to death in Obelisk Road, Woolston, in March 2007, said: “When anyone takes away a human life they should lose their own human right to vote. They didn’t care about human rights otherwise they wouldn’t have taken away someone’s life.

“If they committed a crime against society they should lose their right to decide what happens in society whilst they are inside.”

She added: “What about the victim’s human rights? The courts are all about the perpetrator’s human rights and it forgets about the victim’s human rights.

“People say my son was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was in the right place at the right time. It was the killers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Lewis’ killer Rikki Johnson, then 19, was jailed for life after a trial at Winchester Crown Court in February 2008.

Voting for convicted prisoners is expected to follow the same course as that for unconvicted prisoners. Those on remand are allowed to have postal votes for the constituency in which they are registered.

Winchester MP Steve Brine, who has a prison in his constituency, said: “I am quite shocked by this decision, I don’t support all prisoners having the right to vote and I never have. But for me this opens up the whole issue of prison reform, something I am very supportive of.

“If we lock people up and throw away the key for their time in custody we shouldn’t be too surprised when they come out and struggle to be contributory members of society. I think there is a huge amount of work to be done, from education to relationship counselling and readiness to work training which we should be focused on instead of being bossed around by rulings of the European Court.”

It was unclear how the system would work for local government elections.