LOUISE Woodward has received mercy, but has she or anyone involved in her case had justice?

For when the emotion surrounding the case is stripped away, the conclusion now arrived at - and it may not yet be the last chapter in this extraordinary saga - is unsatisfactory.

Officially, she is guilty of killing eight-month-old Matthew Eappen.

Yet, stoically - and, it must be said, with more dignity and composure than many who helped turn her televised trial in America into theatre - she maintains her innocence.

It is the clash between those two standpoints that provokes the disturbing question of whether justice has really been done.

Arguably, a better outcome might have been the ordering of a re-trial so that the issue of how baby Matthew Eappen died might have been resolved without the question mark that still, even with Louise's conviction for manslaughter, hangs over the case. And, with both the prosecution and defence appealing against the manslaughter verdict, that path may yet have to be followed.

As it is, in dramatically reducing the jury's murder verdict to this lesser one and freeing her, Judge Hiller Zobel has, in the view of most observers, surely come closer to addressing the evidence and element of doubt therein that was apparently dismissed by the jurors.

Meantime, this latest twist in a still unsettled case underlines yet again what a mistake it would be to allow TV cameras into our courts - when their presence threatens the sober presentation and weighing of evidence.

Worse, they inspire the sort of unwholesome and mawkish sideshows as that put on for the benefit of viewers at the pub in Elton, Cheshire, which became Louise's "campaign headquarters."

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