FREE Myra Hindley?

No Home Secretary would dare.

But some periwigged judges might - now that the infamous child-killer is to be allowed to challenge the ruling that she must spend the rest of her life in jail.

The amazing thing, however, is that Hindley's lawyers suggest that public opinion should have no influence on her fate.

That is what they imply happened when, earlier this year, the last Conservative Home Secretary, Michael Howard, reaffirmed the "whole-life" sentence imposed in 1990 by the then Home Secretary, David Waddington. They claimed he was "bowing to political pressure and public opinion."

Yet, if so, as an elected representative he was, quite rightly, living up to his duty of responding to the public's will.

And why should that not be a determining factor in how criminals are dealt with?

After all, since the abolition of capital punishment, there has been considerable erosion of the public's concept of what the alternative, a life sentence, means.

But even if most people were to grudgingly to accept this devaluation, there are certain crimes for which they would still insist that "life" means literally just that.

And Hindley's horrendous and evil crimes are certainly in that category.

That they were all a long time ago; that she has spent 33 years behind bars; that she may be a contrite and changed woman makes no difference.

The fact is that the parents and families of her and her monstrous partner Ian Brady's victims continue to have a whole-life sentence of hell because of their evil.

What justice would it be for them if Myra Hindley were to be freed - when the real redress they were due was for her and Brady to have swung from the gallows when they were convicted in 1966?

The judges conducting the judicial review that is now to take place of the former Home Secretary's "whole-life" decision will, of course, do so in the clinical and detached manner that is expected of the judiciary - beyond the sway of public opinion.

But surely if, unlike an elected government minister, they are under no duty to respond to the public will, they remain entrusted to serve the public - and freeing Myra Hindley would be the opposite of that and natural justice.

She showed no mercy and deserves none.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.