Judges urged to dismiss murderers’ right-to-vote case

UK Attorney General Dominic Grieve has urged the Supreme Court to reject challenges by two convicted murderers who are fighting for the right to vote while in prison.

He said the cases of Peter Chester and George McGeoch raise “important constitutional questions”.

Urging seven justices to dismiss their appeals, Mr Grieve said their cases also raised “important questions as to the proper respective roles of the courts and of Parliament in settling issues surrounding the right to vote of convicted prisoners”.

Chester, who is in his 50s, is serving life for raping and strangling his seven-year-old niece Donna Marie Gillbanks in Blackpool in 1977. He is detained at Wakefield prison in West Yorkshire and the minimum term he was ordered to serve before becoming eligible to apply for parole has expired.

McGeoch, from Glasgow, is serving his life sentence at Dumfries prison for the 1998 murder of Eric Innes in Inverness. He got a minimum term of 13 years but, due to subsequent convictions, will not be considered for parole until 2015.