I almost hesitate to open this up because it is such a difficult topic, but I am interested to gauge opinion on it. As a matter of undisputed fact this lady went armed with a knife to the home of her victim and confronted him, before killing him in a frenzied attack. The victim was a man in his seventies who had a series of historic convictions for sexual assault on children (boys) and was on bail pending trial in connection with new allegations. She was arguably dealt with leniently in two respects: firstly she was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of 'loss of control' rather than murder and secondly she was sentenced to only three and a half years which once her time on remand is allowed for means she will likely be released almost immediately on licence. This for me raises all sorts of very difficult issues. The instinctive human response is that there is some sort of rudimentary justice in it all, but on hard reflection the outcome worries me. She went to his door with a knife at a time when the allegations against him were unproven. Hard though the trial judge tried to set out why in his view it was an exceptional case (and these cases are all fact specific), in today's world I fear that this might be interpreted as leaving the door ajar for vigilante justice which might in the long run weaken the fabric of our society. Almost counter intuitively I am driven to the conclusion that the rule of law has to be upheld as a matter of public policy, and that the outcome in this case is dangerously close (however odious the victim might have been) to undermining it. Most will read the potted version in the Mail or the Sun. Very few will study the Judgment in full in the Weekly Law Reports to unpick the legal nuances. I recall a few years ago that a paediatrician came within minutes of being attacked by an angry mob of morons who thought they had a child molester in the community because they didn't own a dictionary between them. Potentially dangerous stuff. I hope the media are sensible in how they deal with this one.