How can a life sentence mean just NINE years? ‘It gives me nightmares to think about it’
Michelle Stewart was murdered at 17. This week, her devastated parents learned the killer had been approved for ‘temporary release’ – after less than ten years in jail. Now they’re leading the fightback against the shameful system of early release
‘She had her life in front of her, but it was all taken away’
IT was the end of the school week and the group of sixth-year friends decided to pop down to their local village shops to blow off steam and have a bit of fun. For Michelle Stewart, it was the first time she had been out in weeks.
The 17-year-old had recently ditched her long-time boyfriend, John Wilson, but he was proving difficult to shake off. He would bombard her mobile phone with so many texts that, in exasperation, she was finally forced to change her number.
Now, at last, she could walk arm in arm with her girlfriends and enjoy some much needed breathing space. But still, her obsessive ex was not getting the message.
On that early November night in 2008, the 20-year-old took two buses to travel the ten miles from his home in Prestwick to Drongan, both in Ayrshire, and wait for Michelle at a shop where he knew she often went to buy sweets.
Perhaps he hoped for some tender reunion, but his unwarranted presence served as an unpleasant shock to the girls. Unsurprisingly, Michelle refused to talk to him, but the rejection unwittingly unleashed a pent-up fury that would lead to tragedy.
As Wilson’s trial would later hear, the thug threatened to ‘do her in’, in front of her friends. The girls again ignored him, linking arms and walking away. Wilson suddenly grabbed Michelle from behind, pulling her away from her two friends and witnesses described seeing him launch a frenzied knife attack on his defenceless victim.
In a final act of cowardice, Wilson ran off as Michelle grabbed hold of her friend Gemma and mouthed: ‘He stabbed me.’ They were the last words she spoke as she collapsed to the ground, dying.
At least eight people witnessed Wilson’s coldblooded attack. He was arrested soon afterwards and her grieving parents imagined that at the very least their despair could be mitigated by a hefty prison term for their daughter’s killer.
At the High Court in Glasgow the following March, Wilson admitted murdering Michelle by stabbing her in the head and body up to ten times.
The court heard of the dreadful impact the Auchinleck Academy pupil’s death has had on her family and the recurring nightmares it has visited upon her mother, Josephine.
Wilson’s defence QC, Ian Duguid, said the only explanation he could offer for the crime was his client’s ‘complete immaturity and inability to handle the break-up of the relationship’. Sentencing Wilson, who has previous convictions for a racially aggravated breach of the peace and for culpable and reckless fire-raising after throwing a firework into a bus full of passengers, trial judge Lord Brailsford told him: ‘This was an entirely unprovoked attack.
‘It was in front of the young lady’s friends in a public place. You have shown little or no remorse.’
The judge said the only real mitigating factors were Wilson’s youth and low intellect and the fact he pleaded guilty ‘at an early stage’. Lord Brailsford said he would have ordered the accused to serve a minimum of 16 years were it not for that early plea. Instead, he reduced the punishment to only 12 years before he could apply for parole.
Michelle’s family were stunned. A life taken, by a killer unprovoked and utterly without remorse. The punishment should fit that crime.
Speaking outside the court, her devastated father, Kenny, said he had expected at least a 17-year sentence – ‘for every year Michelle has lived’. He added: ‘He stabbed my daughter ten times.
‘She was going to be 18 next week and I’ve got to go to the graveyard and put down 18 roses on her grave for her 18th birthday – that’s all we’ve got left.
‘She had her life in front of her, she planned to go to university, but it was all taken away from her. That guy will get out in 12 years but we’ve got the life sentence.’
Wilson, he reasoned, might as well have picked up that knife and plunged it into the heart of justice itself. This week, that knife was twisted even deeper after it emerged that Wilson will be released back onto the streets after less than a decade behind bars. The news was delivered in a letter from the Scottish Prison Service, explaining that Wilson – not yet 30 – had been approved for ‘first grant of temporary release’ - a precursor to parole – which it said includes ‘release for work etc, home visits, short leave, pre-release leave and unescorted day leave’.
The letter, part of the SPS’s victim notification scheme, came as a shattering blow to Mrs Stewart, 55.
‘It took me straight back to that night, not that it’s ever been away,’ she said. ‘It was panic attacks and nobody knows what it’s like until they’ve been through it. I just sat and cried and broke my heart.
‘It’s just over nine years Wilson’s done and that’s him getting out for home visits, work visits and
escorted visits we don’t know about. It’s just one nightmare after another.’
Michelle’s father, now 58, felt ‘total disbelief’ when told of the letter and raised fears that Wilson will be at ‘high risk’ of reoffending when he is released back into the community. ‘I said, “Are these people trying to rub it in?”
‘I thought the sentence was too short without considering this guy for vocational leave and home visits. If the judge has given him 12 years he must do 12 years before he sees the light of day.
‘It’s only nine-and-a-bit years – that’s a scandal. It is not life it is 12 years – that’s a chapter.’
The letter’s effect has proved incendiary and Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson has now taken up cudgels at Holyrood on behalf of the Stewart family.
She raised Wilson’s case at First Minister’s Questions this week and called on newly installed Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf to order a ‘root and branch’ review of sentencing, parole and home release policy.
Miss Davidson said the family were told Wilson could be allowed into the community unescorted for up to eight days at a time.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon vowed to ‘look closely’ at the case and said Mr Yousaf would meet the Stewarts to hear from them directly.
Taken in isolation, Wilson is a disturbing example of how an offender can ride on the back of Scotland’s soft-touch justice system with such apparent ease.
But this is not a one-off and there are examples of thugs being released early, who then go on to commit serious crimes such as murder.
Miss Davidson also referred to the cases of Craig McClelland, who was killed by a convicted criminal who ignored an electronic tagging order; Moira Gilbertson, who was murdered by her ex-partner after he was released following a previous murder; and Linda McDonald, who was brutally attacked last year by Robbie McIntosh just days after he had been released on home leave following a previous conviction for murder.
Miss Davidson said: ‘We keep being told that criminals have rights that need to be respected, but who in the Scottish Government is standing up for victims’ rights? What reforms are being delivered now to correct those injustices?’
On a busy first day in his new role, Mr Yousaf met the family of Mr McClelland, who was killed in a random street attack by James Wright after he tampered with his electronic tag following an early release from jail on a home detention order.
Despite police being told and the 25-year-old thug being recalled to jail, he remained free for months before stabbing his victim to death in Paisley, Renfrewshire, last July. Following that meeting, Mr Yousaf acknowledged the ‘hurt and anguish’ Mr McClelland’s death had caused the family and said he was ‘determined’ to learn lessons.
One pressing question might be why it is that, since the SNP came to power in 2007, there have been a total of 32 lifers released from prison after serving ten or fewer years of their sentence.
As far as the victims’ families are concerned, those figures from the Parole Board’s annual report betray just how little account is taken of their loss and suffering when considering whether it is appropriate to release yet more offenders back into the community.
The Stewarts plan to tell Mr Yousaf that families of victims must be allowed to give evidence to the Parole Board before decisions are made about releasing people. Mr Stewart, a roofer, said: ‘You need to look at the complete justice system.
‘With sentences, there’s got to be a deterrent. Where’s the deterrent for this knife crime?’
He dreads bumping into Wilson in the street: ‘I wouldn’t like to be in Asda and see him smirking at us or when I’m at a garage filling up my petrol. He has never once said he was sorry.’
The endless pain of a child’s murder is felt all the more keenly by a family so clearly welded to the notion of community service.
Michelle’s brother, Steven, 34, is a police officer, while her sister Lisa, 38, works as an anti-knife campaigner. Another brother, Kenneth, 36, is an A&E staff nurse. He had just come off duty when he heard about the attack on Michelle and raced to try to save her.
Mrs Stewart was among the first on the scene. She said: ‘It gives me nightmares to think about it.
‘She was such a happy, beautiful girl who would do anything to help other people. I am lost without her.’
Mr Stewart senior, who now lives in Catrine, Ayrshire, with his second wife Gemma, said: ‘The whole system is a joke. Steven could end up having to arrest him. One day, Kenneth could pop into Ayr or Crosshouse Hospital and have to treat him. We want it written into his release conditions that he can’t come into Ayrshire.’
Steven Stewart said the family fears Wilson will go straight to visit Michelle’s grave, adding: ‘We don’t want him near it. I don’t agree with the justice system and the sentences passed. Jails are like a holiday camp for some of them. They get everything they want.’
At Holyrood, Miss Sturgeon acknowledged the hurt that the SPS’s impersonal letter would have caused, but warned against politicians meddling in the ‘independent processes that determine whether prisoners should be eligible for parole or other forms of release’.
Prison, she argued, was ‘not the most effective form of sentence for some’. She said: ‘It is right that people are punished appropriately – I absolutely agree with Ruth Davidson about that – and it is absolutely right that the interests of victims are at the centre of our justice system, but we also owe it to victims and society to make sure that we have a justice system that effectively rehabilitates those who are capable of rehabilitation.’
It is a fine judgment call, deciding whether an offender who has demonstrated so little understanding of the horror he wrought with a knife has been rehabilitated less than ten years after he was jailed.
Of course, the criminal justice system must be free from political interference, but that does not mean that a system so unfairly weighted towards the rights of criminals cannot be recalibrated to better balance the needs of victims.
Michelle Stewart cannot now demand justice be done – a flash from John Wilson’s blade saw to that. But if her life – and the shocking manner of her death – are to mean anything, then perhaps it can act as a beacon for change.
Anything less would feel like justice itself being knifed in the back.
NOTHING underscores the gulf between what the public want and what the justice system delivers more than the horrific story of Michelle Stewart, whose life was cut short in a frenzied knife attack as the 17-year-old strolled with friends.
A life sentence was duly passed on the killer, John Wilson, and although her family would still have a huge burden of grief they could at least take comfort that he would be in custody for a very long time.
But such is the nature of the relentless soft-touch agenda that the SNP has unleashed, Michelle’s family have now been told in an impersonal letter that Wilson is on the verge of freedom after only nine years.
Sentencing is supposed to be a matter for the courts, but the reality is that headline sentences handed down are, as in this case, usurped by a system of automatic reductions.
And in many other cases, the true sentence is determined not by a sheriff or judge who has heard all the evidence, seen victims or witnesses in the flesh and looked the accused in the eye.
Instead it is by the faceless parole board who consider dry reports and do not hear directly from those most affected by crime – the victims and their families.
Scotland has a new Justice Minister in Humza Yousaf. He was callow and ineffectual as Transport Minister but has the chance to raise his game in this post.
Will he pick up from where Kenny MacAskill and Michael Matheson left off? They were cold technocrats, out of touch with the public sick of seeing thugs and criminals fawned over while victims are forgotten. They were forever chasing faddish notions about ‘justice journeys’ and ‘progressive’ policies.
There is nothing progressive about a system that equates the life of a teenage girl with nine years behind bars.
Mr Yousaf must begin by ensuring that the sentence handed down in court is the sentence that will be served in full.