Disgraced energy
minister Chris Huhne was jailed for eight months on Monday for lying to
police about a speeding offence in 2003, in the final chapter of a
bizarre tale of adultery and revenge that has gripped the British
public.
Huhne's ex-wife Vicky Pryce, a prominent economist, was also jailed for eight months for her role in the deception.
Prior
to the scandal, Huhne had been seen as a potential future leader of the
Liberal Democrats, junior partners to the Conservatives in Britain's
ruling coalition government.
When
his car was caught by a speed camera, he and his wife falsely told
police she had been driving, so that the minister could avoid a driving
ban.
The incident remained a family
secret for years but came back to haunt Huhne after he left Pryce for
his mistress, Carina Trimingham, in 2010. Pryce told two newspapers
about the 2003 deception in an act of revenge that landed both Huhne and
herself in the dock.
"Any element of tragedy is entirely your own fault," judge Nigel Sweeney told the pair as he passed sentence on them.
"IMPLACABLE DESIRE FOR REVENGE"
"There
is a controlling, manipulative and devious side to your nature," he
told Pryce, saying she had been driven by "an implacable desire for
revenge".
"Despite your high
office, Mr Huhne, you tried to lie your way out of trouble by claiming
you were innocent, by repeating that lie again and again," the judge
told the disgraced politician.
"You have fallen from a great height."
The
estranged pair sat side-by-side in the glass-walled dock during the
lengthy sentencing hearing but did not make eye-contact. Trimingham sat
in the public gallery in the courtroom packed with journalists.
Dressed
in a dark suit and tie, Huhne, 58, stood grim-faced to hear his
sentence. Wearing a black jacket, silver-grey roll-neck top and dangly
earrings, Pryce, 60, appeared to be fighting back tears throughout the
hearing.
The judge told the pair they would serve at least half of their sentences before being released on parole.
Huhne
resigned as energy secretary in February 2012, when he and Pryce were
both charged with perverting the course of justice. He spent the best
part of a year fighting a costly legal battle, trying to get the charge
against him thrown out.
That
attempt failed when Judge Sweeney ruled at the end of January that he
should face trial. Huhne initially pleaded not guilty, but a week later,
on the morning the trial was due to start, he stunned Britain by
changing his plea to guilty.
"BLOODBATH"
His
lawyer, John Kelsey-Fry, told the court Huhne's 11th-hour guilty plea
had taken courage and had avoided what would have been "a bloodbath" if
Huhne and Pryce had stood trial together.
Instead,
Pryce stood trial alone after pleading not guilty. She admitted taking
Huhne's speeding penalty but put forward an archaic defense of "marital
coercion", arguing that Huhne had bullied her into it.
A first jury failed to agree on a verdict on Pryce, but after a retrial a second jury convicted her on Thursday.
Pryce's trials revealed painful details of the breakdown of her 26-year marriage to Huhne.
He
became a minister in May 2010, but within weeks a newspaper found out
he was having an affair about which Pryce had been unaware.
The
story was widely covered by the national press, with the added spice
that Trimingham had previously been in a lesbian relationship.
Evidence
shown at Pryce's trial revealed how, starting in November 2010, she
spent six months plotting with journalists to try to get the story about
the 2003 speeding deception into the papers in a way that would damage
Huhne but not expose her.
"I definitely want to nail him," Pryce wrote to one journalist in a March 2011 email that was read out in court.
REUTERS