To capture the scale of the injustice the victims of UVF supergrass Gary Haggarty felt at the leniency of his sentence, you need only read the first paragraph of the Court of Appeal judgment published yesterday.
A former member of the murderous and informer ridden Mount Vernon UVF, Haggarty was arrested in 2009, questioned and then charged with the murder of John Harbinson.
Mr Harbinson was beaten to death with a hammer by a UVF gang in north Belfast in May 1997.
It is at this stage that the Harbinson family rightly expected justice, instead Haggarty, who was a long running police informer, indicated he wanted to become an assisting offender.
On January 13, 2010 it was agreed that the serial killer,who had spent all of his adult life involved in paramilitary criminality, was to be accepted as a state witness.
Having pleaded guilty to five murders and hundreds of other offences, he walked away with a six-and-a-half year sentence, a reward for helping the state.
But the question remains, helping them to do what?
Despite more than 1000 interviews over a seven year period, only one person is to be prosecuted based on Haggarty's evidence.
The story of the Mount Vernon UVF is a stain on this society, a stain on policing, a stain on our justice system.
Harbinson and the majority of his gang of thieves and killers were in the pay of the state. Had the RUC carried out their duties properly he would have been behind bars long before 2009.
Instead, despite the sentence being increased by the Court of Appeal to ten years, the now 47-year-old will not spend another day in prison.
Instead he enjoys a comfortable life, away from Northern Ireland, with a new identity at the expense of the public purse in witness protection.
And what of the victims, those he murdered, where is their justice?
Not just a statistic in the history of our conflict, they were people with families who loved them dearly.
As well as John Harbinson, Haggarty admitted murdering four other people.
Sean McParland, (55) Eamon Fox, (44), Gary Convie and Sean McDermott, (37).
That a man capable of such barbarity was considered an appropriate person to be a state witness is a demonstrable example of the failed and failed again supergrass system.
The court of appeal ruling makes for sobering reading, but it will be of little comfort to those still grieving because of the actions of Haggarty and his cohorts.
