YVONNE Sleightholme is paying a high price for protesting her innocence.

She would be a free woman had she recanted her previous statements, confessed to killing Jayne Smith and expressed remorse.

Instead, Sleightholme remains in a medium security jail without even the prospect of being transferred to an open prison.

The trial judge set Sleightholme's tariff at ten years when he jailed her for murder in 1991.

This has been ignored. The Parole Board has refused to consider freeing her. The board's report last month said the main factor that influenced its decision was "her denial of guilt and what consequences if any, follow therefrom".

This has disturbing parallels with the Stephen Downing case.

Mr Downing was the victim of Britain's longest-running miscarriage of justice. He was released 27 years after being jailed for a murder he did not commit. He would have been out in 1991 had he "confessed".

Ryedale MP John Greenway is, in his own words, "not a bleeding heart liberal". But he is angered by a justice system that contrives to keep Sleightholme in jail while cutting the sentence of sex attacker John Lomas - described as a "continuing danger to women" - because the evidence forced him to plead guilty.

The Parole Board's first duty is to ensure any prisoner it releases is not a risk to the public. But Yvonne Sleightholme had no previous record of violence, she is blind and has an "exemplary" jail record.

At the very least the board should reconsider moving her to an open prison, where her behaviour could be reassessed. It is odd that even this option is denied to a prisoner largely on the grounds that she believes she is innocent.

Updated: 11:32 Monday, January 13, 2003