£15k legal aid for killer who plotted to slaughter a jail guard
A SERIAL killer who plotted to murder a prison guard in an escape bid was given up to £15,000 of legal aid to fight a compensation battle.
Triple-murderer Joanne Dennehy was kept in solitary confinement for two years after her gruesome plot was discovered, which she claimed made her ‘upset’ and violated her human rights.
A judge has now thrown out the 33-year-old’s bid for compensation – but it emerged she had been handed up to £15,000 of taxpayers’ money to cover the costs of her legal battle.
Fresh details of why self- styled ‘monster’ Dennehy – who laughed as she was jailed for life in 2014 for killing three men and grievously wounding two others – was placed in isolation were disclosed by the High Court.
Prison chiefs at Category A HMP Bronzefield, near Ashford in Surrey, had uncovered a ‘credible’ escape bid involving two other inmates in which she planned to maim or kill a guard and use their severed finger to bypass the jail’s biometric security system.
A prison uniform was discovered hidden in the laundry room and guards discovered a drawing of the jail’s layout in her diary, the court heard. While on remand Dennehy, from Peterborough, also told psychiatrists that she had ‘planned to kill a police officer and steal his keys’.
Senior staff at the prison segregated her since she ‘posed a particular risk because of her ability to develop relationships with others, including both prison staff and other prisoners’, which she might exploit.
She claimed she was a victim of disability discrimination relating to ‘personality disorders’ and that she had suffered ‘torture or degrading treatment’ – banned under the Human Rights Act – and asked the High Court to award her compensation.
Her barrister Hugh Southey, a leading member of Matrix Chambers which was co-founded by Cherie Blair, argued she had been ‘unfairly and unlawfully’ held and that continued isolation left her ‘tearful and upset’ and she had self-harmed.
Government lawyers conceded the segregation period, from September 2013 to September 2015, was technically unlawful because it was not properly authorised by then justice secretary Chris Grayling. But judge Mr Justice Singh, sitting in London, has now ruled it was ‘necessary and proportionate’ and in accordance with the law because she posed an ‘exceptionally high risk to others’. She had not been kept in total isolation as she was allowed into the library and gym and worked as an orderly.
Dennehy is only the third woman to be given a whole-life prison term, after Moors murderer Myra Hindley and serial killer Rosemary West.
She stabbed Lukasz Slaboszewski, Falklands War veteran John Chapman and her landlord Kevin Lee to death in March 2013. While on the run, she and an accomplice randomly attacked two dog walkers, Robin Bereza and John Rogers.
She pleaded guilty to her killing spree, which was said to be driven by a ‘sadistic lust’ for blood.
The full cost of her legal aid bill is yet to be calculated, but the Ministry of Justice said an aid certificate was granted to solicitors allowing up to £15,000 of spending on her case.
Tory MP Peter Bone said: ‘This is the sort of thing that drives the public mad. This money could be spent on the Health Service or schools or fixing potholes, not funding a totally spurious and unjustified human rights case.’
Ministers recently ordered a crackdown on the compensation culture in Britain’s jails after it emerged that in the last financial year a record £9.3million was spent on payouts and legal costs for claims involving inmates – a 25 per cent rise from the year before.
‘She posed a particular risk’