FOR the seventh time in his career, the British Home Secretary, Mr Michael Howard, was accused of acting unlawfully by the Court of Appeal yesterday after setting a 15 year minimum prison sentence for the two boys who murdered two year old James Bulger.
And once again, Mr Howard decided to continue his battle against the judiciary, insisting he would immediately appeal to the House of Lords.
"We won on the substantial question [that a Home Secretary can set tariffs for child murderers]. We have lost on one other point and we will appeal that to the House of Lords," he added.
In a strong ruling, Lord Woolf, the Master of the Rolls, sitting with Lord Justice Hobhouse and Lord Justice Morritt, ordered Mr Howard to reconsider the case because he had "departed from the standards of fairness" when imposing the tariff for the boys.
They also dismissed a petition signed by over 300,000 people calling for the boys to be imprisoned for life as "irrelevant".
The ruling provoked an angry response from James Bulger's family, who accused the judges of "kicking us in the face" and not "giving a damn" about what the public wanted.
"The Home Secretary was acting on behalf of the people. People vote MPs in and they are supposed to act on their behalf. But it seems as though if they do they are ruled unlawful . . . He promise us along with John Major that he would fight this tooth and nail," said Mr Ray Matthews, James Bulger's uncle.
Now is the time to prove that they are standing up against this crime," Mr Matthews added.
The two boys - Robert Thompson and Jon Venables - were just 10 years old when they abducted the child from a shopping precinct in Liverpool in 1993 and murdered him before leaving his naked body on a railway line. After their conviction, the trial judge recommended they serve a minimum eight year tariff. However this was later increased to 10 years by the their Lord Chief Justice. Mr Howard later overruled this decision, stating the boys must serve at least 15 years.
Although the judges described the murder of two year old James as a "truly horrific crime" and "exceptionally cruel", they ruled that the 15 year tariff was unlawful because Mr Howard had not considered all the relevant material in the case, including the two boys' psychiatric and pre sentencing reports.
After the ruling, the Home Office minister, Mr David Maclean, insisted it would not affect the boys' sentence.
"This judgment does not affect the lawfulness of the continued detention of the two boys. The court's findings against the Home Secretary are essentially about the procedural aspects of the case, he said.