I would think, said the Home Office Minister Tony McNulty, that given the “serious and heinous nature” of Learco Chindamo’s crime, “the individual has forfeited any right to domicile in the UK”.

Which only goes to prove why ministers should rarely be allowed to interfere in the judicial process. For the implication of Mr McNulty’s remark is that anyone who has committed a sufficiently serious offence should be deported. Deported to where, I am not sure: much as it might suit our politicians, there are no more Van Diemen’s Lands awaiting chained and starving British convicts.

Chindamo is clearly British, having lived here since he was 6 years old. He speaks no Italian, appears to have no connections with Italy other than the accident of citizenship, and grew up in North London. To try to pretend that he is not a British problem, grown on British streets, fostered through a British education system, is a further abrogation of responsibility by the Government. Would that it were so simple; would that we could just deport this social problem, Mr McNulty, sweep it under an imaginary Italian carpet.

It is far trickier than that, a fact recognised yesterday by Frances Lawrence, widow of the headmaster, Philip, who was murdered by Chindamo 12 years ago. Avoiding the pat certainty of the politician, Mrs Lawrence, on the day of what would have been her husband’s 60th birthday, made what she admitted was a confusing plea for nothing less than an upending of the modern justice system in favour of what she called “humanity”.

She conceded that, had she been a judge on the appeal panel, she too would probably have decided that Chindamo had a right to stay in Britain. The law (a combination of human rights legislation and EU immigration regulations, on both of which Chindamo won) is clear. Yet the politicians have wrongly given the impression that Chindamo would be deported on release. Why? Because it’s an easy headline in the face of public hysteria over youth crime, immigration, and in particular the deportation of foreign prisoners. But Chindamo was always going to be a different case to the adult asylum-seeker who robs, rapes or murders.

Having admitted that Chindamo probably has the right to remain in the UK, having admitted that much of her furiously devastated reaction is due to shock because she was led to believe otherwise, and having so admirably said that she wishes him well and a positive life – “it’s never given me any pleasure to see a young man locked away” – Mrs Lawrence added that she wanted “humanity” to overturn the law in this instance. “In this case it’s to try and say the law is not always what must be our context; humanity is more important . . . people feel so confused, that their needs and fears are second place, squashed by some bureaucratic, insensate law.”

Mrs Lawrence has been, unforgivably, the cog in the machine. Having lost her husband and raised his four children alone against the backdrop of growing public fears over teenage knife crime, she was abused again by a government publicity system that lied over what was likely to happen to her husband’s killer on his release. One can understand why she feels squashed by insensate bureaucracy.

But to draw the conclusion that “humanity” should therefore override the rule of law is, however understandable, wrong. The rule of law developed to put humanity on a legal, equal footing; it is an attempt, however imperfect at times, to deliver humanity objectively to everyone. The decision to allow Chindamo to remain in the UK is in fact a perfect expression of that humanity, and I feel proud to live under a system that ultimately took the decision to allow him to stay.

The alternative – to allow subjective feeling to overrule rational law – is to move back towards the days of crude local justice, of public stocks and floggings and hangings; to the Salem witchhunts, to the boatloads of convicts headed for Van Diemen’s Land.

Mrs Lawrence said yesterday that she didn’t understand how the Human Rights Act, which she had “always been a staunch advocate of”, as an exemplar of how human beings could live together equally and kindly, has now “allowed someone who destroyed a life to pick and choose how he wants to live his”. But it hasn’t.

Chindamo isn’t picking and choosing. For a start, he hasn’t yet been allowed out of jail, and won’t be until he is considered no longer a danger to the public. The very decision to release him would rule him out of deportation under a law that allows it only for those who are a fundamental threat to society and national security. And he will be on licence, subject to return to jail with any misdemeanour. To refuse him his rights at that point would be to deny the possibility of rehabilitation or, to use the Christian language that Mrs Lawrence said society should stop shying away from, redemption.

The fault here is with the politicians who forced Chindamo to use the human rights and other European legislation to fight for the right to stay in the country that, like it or not, is his home – and who wrongly gave the impression that they would be able to deport him. “We’ve always been given the impression that he would be deported and so I suppose that was part of the whole justice system for me, this was what would happen,” said Mrs Lawrence. “If you see things being dealt with properly, that can alleviate a lot of anxiety.”

I can understand a little of that anxiety. I can certainly understand why it must feel as though the system has gone wrong. But it hasn’t. It’s gone exactly right. And it’s the people who led the Lawrence family to believe that it would go otherwise, and who are still doing so with gung-ho promises of “robust” appeals, who should be explaining themselves today.

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