A TORY councillor’s wife who was jailed for posting a racist tweet after the Southport attack has been released from prison.
Lucy Connolly was sentenced to 31 months in prison in October after being found guilty of inciting racial hatred after she made the post on X just hours following the murders in Southport.
Lucy Connolly was jailed in October for 31 months after posting a racist tweet on X[/caption]
Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice had raised concerns for alleged ‘mistreatment’ of Connolly while she was imprisoned at HMP Peterborough[/caption]
Today, however, Connolly – the wife of Tory councillor Raymond Connolly – has walked free from HMP Peterborough after serving less than half her sentence.
A prison source said she was driven from HMP Peterborough in a taxi this morning.
Connolly’s sentencing had been slammed as “two-tier justice” and was called “cruelly long and disproportionate sentence” by Raymond.
After pleading guilty to inciting racial hatred by publishing and distributing “threatening or abusive” written material on X, she was jailed at Birmingham Crown Court in October last year.
Her tweet – which was deleted three-and-a-half hours after it was posted – said: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the ba***rds for all I care… if that makes me racist so be it.”
She had made the post the same day three children were murdered by Axel Rudakubana in Southport.
Connolly had tried to appeal her sentence in May but the Court of Appeal dismissed the case.
Following this, husband Ray said he was “heartbroken”, adding: “My wife has paid a very high price for making a mistake and today the court has shown her no mercy”.
He also called the decision to throw the bid out “shocking and unfair” and claimed his wife was the victim of “two-tier justice”.
The councillor said: “The 284 days of separation have been very hard, particularly on our 12-year-old girl. Lucy posted one nasty tweet when she was upset and angry about three little girls who were brutally murdered in Southport.
“She realised the tweet was wrong and deleted it within four hours. That did not mean Lucy was a ‘far right thug’ as Prime Minister Keir Starmer claimed.
“My wife Lucy is a good person and not a racist. As a childminder she took care of small children of African and Asian heritage; they loved Lucy as she loved them.
“My wife has paid a very high price for making a mistake and today the court has shown her no mercy.
“Lucy got more time in jail for one tweet than some paedophiles and domestic abusers get.
“I think the system wanted to make an example of Lucy so other people would be scared to say things about immigration. This is not the British way.”
The Free Speech Union – which funded Connolly’s appeal bid – said it did not dispute that the tweet was “offensive” but said it was “deeply disappointed” in the dismissal of the appeal.
It added: “Two-and-a-half years for a single tweet is grossly disproportionate and it should trouble anyone who believes the law must be applied evenly, without fear or favour.”
Connolly’s case has also attracted international attention, with the US Department of State saying in May it was “monitoring” her situation.
After she lost her appeal to reduce her sentence, a spokesman for the state department said: “We can confirm that we are monitoring this matter.
“The United States supports freedom of expression at home and abroad, and remains concerned about infringements on freedom of expression.”
Earlier this year, a teacher was sacked after calling Connolly’s prison sentence “two-tier policing”.
Simon Pearson, 56, who taught English to foreign language students at Preston College in Lancashire, lost his job following an internal investigation after he posted about Connolly.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has faced accusations of hypocrisy for defending Connolly’s “harsh” sentencing, after he himself previously suggested those who quickly deleted offensive social media statements should not necessarily face criminal action.
Connolly’s post was viewed 310,000 times in the three-and-a-half hours before she deleted it.
While serving as director of public prosecutions, Starmer introduced guidance for prosecutors to consider a more lenient approach towards suspects who “swiftly” deleted social media posts and expressed “genuine remorse”.
The guidance urged prosecutors to consider four factors where “a prosecution is unlikely to be both necessary and proportionate”.
These included if “swift and effective action has been taken by the suspect and/or others, for example service providers, to remove the communication in question or otherwise block access to it”.
It also urged prosecutors to look at whether the communication was “intended for a wide audience” and if this audience “included the victim or target of the communication in question”.
In June, Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice claimed Connolly was being “mistreated” in prison.
He said she had been handcuffed and stripped of her privileges by prison officers after visiting her at HMP Peterborough.
Mr Tice told The Sun Connolly was a “political prisoner” – and vowed to introduce “Lucy’s Law”, to stop similar cases of overly harsh punishments if Reform came to power.
Saying she was being “manhandled without provocation”, he told The Sun: “Lucy has bruises on her wrists, five days on from being violently manhandled by a group of aggressive guards who forced her into a wing riddled with drugs and violent women.
“Two prisoners have died there in the last 12 months.
“She was supposed to be in the enhanced wing for good behaviour. Something very wrong has occurred.”