Good Morning Britain hosts Susanna Reid and Ed Balls were forced to intervene on Wednesday morning as a guest in the studio called on David Carrick’s fellow inmates to attack him.
The serial rapist and former police officer has been given 36 life sentences and will serve more than 30 years in prison, for crimes spanning almost two decades.
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, who delivered the verdict this week, said she thought carefully about handing Carrick a whole-life sentence, which would mean he could never be released, but said the threshold was not met.
The Mirror associate editor Kevin Maguire joined Ed and Susanna in the ITV studio and noted the judge had pointed out that Carrick would have ‘a very difficult time in prison’.
As Susanna was left wondering whether he could be kept separate from fellow inmates, Daily Mail journalist Andrew Pierce said he ‘hoped not’.
He added: “He should face the verdict of his fellow prisoners. If they don’t like coppers who are inside.”
Ed asked him to clarify what he meant, to which Andrew said: “If they want to bash him, good.”
Susanna quickly insisted: “No, no Andrew. That’s vengeance not justice.”
Andrew replied: “That’s what happens in prison, I'm sure. They have their own code of conduct,” to which Ed similarly pushed back, saying: “It’s inciting violence. You don’t mean that.”
However, Andrew refused to be moved from his position and said the inmates in prison were not likely watching Good Morning Britain.
He concluded: “If he gets attacked in prison, I couldn't care less.”
Sitting next to him, Kevin said: “The state, when it locks people up, has a duty also to protect them. It doesn’t mean he has a cushy life, but protect them.”
In her verdict, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb labelled Carrick a ‘monster’ and recounted graphic details of his offences against a dozen women, causing ‘irretrievable devastation’.
The judge also acknowledged the physical and psychological impacts of Carrick's offending on his victims, as well as how his job as a police officer deterred victims from reporting him.
Following Carrick’s sentencing, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley vowed to ‘earn back the trust and confidence of women’ as he acknowledged the force had let down women across London.
He said he would “rid the Met of those who corrupt our integrity by bringing the same intensive investigative approach to identifying wrongdoing in our own ranks as we do to identifying criminals in the community”.
*Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV
