The pro-euthanasia lobby’s reaction to Frances Inglis’ sentence reveals their agenda and ignores key facts of the case

Under British law mercy killing (ie. euthanasia voluntary or involuntary) is treated as murder under the Murder Act 1965 and carries a sentence of life imprisonment. The judge has discretion in sentencing for murder depending on the facts of the case and may lessen the sentence in the light of mitigating factors such as ‘provocation’ or ‘diminished responsibility’.

Life imprisonment however does not mean life imprisonment. The standard sentence is fifteen years but the range is very broad. The Jigsaw Killer Stephen Marshall got 36 years. On the other hand extreme Frances Inglis got only nine years and this has now been reduced by the court of appeal to five.

The pro-euthanasia lobby’s ultimate objective is to decriminalise all mercy killing. They are attempting to do so using an incremental strategy and by starting with very modest initial objectives. Attempts to legalise overt mercy killing in Britain have always been unsuccessful and so the pro-euthanasia lobby have therefore focused on the softer target of assisted suicide (helping people to kill themselves).

Encouraging or assisting a suicide is illegal under the Suicide Act 1961, but carries sentence of only ‘up to 14 years imprisonment’. The judge has discretion in sentencing here also and in practice many of those convicted (and there are very few convictions at all) receive only suspended sentences, meaning in effect that they do not go to prison at all. Kay Gilderdale was a recent case in point.

Lord Joffe’s Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, defeated by 148 votes to 100 at second reading in the House of Lords on 12 May 2006, was the first of two failed recent attempts to legalise assisted suicide for the terminally ill. In like manner, Lord Falconer attempted to amend the Suicide Act in 2009, by way of the Coroners and Justice Bill, a piece of legislation paradoxically designed actually to tighten the suicide law. His aim was to decriminalise taking ‘loved ones’ abroad for assisted suicide but the measure was defeated by 194 to 141. In less than two weeks Margo MacDonald will try again with her End of Life Assistance Bill in Scotland.

Because of the repeated failures to change the law in parliament the pro-euthanasia lobby have shifted their focus to the courts. Debbie Purdy managed, by way of the Supreme Court, to force the Director of Public Prosecutions to publish the criteria by which he decides whether or not a prosecution for assisted suicide is in the public interest.

These criteria I have previously argued are fundamentally flawed in that they have pandered to the agenda of the pro-euthanasia lobby by making prosecution less likely when the act is ‘wholly motivated by compassion’. This has effectively changed the working of the law by shifting the focus from ‘intention’ (a testable quality) to ‘motivation’ (a quality very difficult to assess objectively). It is therefore not surprising that we are seeing very few convictions.

The case of Tony Nicklinson is an attempt to do for the Murder Act what Debbie Purdy has done for the Suicide Act – to force the DPP to create concessions in sentencing for mercy killing – ie. Euthanasia.

In the meantime the other goal of the pro-euthanasia lobby is to get Parliament to review the Murder Act with the ultimate aim of decriminalising mercy killing.

This is demonstrated in the reaction we see to the Inglis judgement. Sarah Wootton, Chief Executive of Dignity in Dying, said after the hearing: ‘Whilst we do not condone Mrs Inglis's actions, given that she directly ended her son's life without his consent, it is clear that her motives were selfless, and we do not think that her actions should be unduly punished because murder law is not equipped for compassion.’

Ms Wootton’s aim is to build momentum for a review of the Murder Act. The British Humanist Association (BHA) has similarly said that the law needs to be reformed to distinguish between cases of ‘mercy killing’ and murder. The language used is that of Dignity in Dying (DID).

Naomi Phillips, BHA head of public affairs, said: ‘Today’s judgment demonstrates that the courts are bound by a restrictive law which fails to distinguish between where a person has compassionately assisted another to die, and where that was done with malicious intent or murder.

‘However, it is for parliamentarians not judges to make the legal changes necessary in order to ensure that cases of “mercy killing” and of murder are seen and treated differently under a reformed law.

‘Ultimately, we want assisted dying to be legalised in the UK. Without those legal reforms, those who are vulnerable remain at risk because legal safeguards, which would accompany the legalisation of assisted dying, are not in place to protect them from coercion or other malice.

We need a law on assisted dying that is sensible, ethical and forward-thinking, that both upholds people’s fundamental human right to die with dignity, in a manner of their choosing, and which protects those who are motivated by compassion to assist another's death.’

The BHA’s overt objective (legalising euthanasia whether voluntary or involuntary as in this case) is broader than that of DID (assisted suicide for the ‘terminally ill’) but this only goes to show how seamless these various categories are.

What these groups conveniently choose to ignore are the facts of this case. As has been made clear in the judgement, Tom Inglis’ brain damage was at least in part the result of his mother’s earlier attempt to kill him.

In their ruling, Lord Judge said that Mrs Inglis – who was not in court - not only killed her son without considering the rest of the family, her initial failed attempt on his life made his condition worse.

‘The appellant’s actions were deliberate and premeditated, and her compulsive objective was indeed to kill her son,’ he said.

‘She was motivated throughout by her personal, unremitting conviction that she should release him from the living hell his limited life had become… She tried to kill Thomas and did eventually kill him without a thought to the feelings of anyone else, including his father and brothers.’

He added: ‘Harsh as it is to have to say it, she had contributed to the very sorry condition from which, on the day of his death, Thomas was suffering.’

If we were to change the law to decriminalise mercy killing (in this case involuntary euthanasia) we would be removing legal protection from all vulnerable people whose lives are judged by some other person as not worth living.

We would be saying that one person, on the basis of such a judgement, should be able to break into a hospital ward and kill them ‘out of compassion’ and get off scot-free.

The effect would be to encourage more acts of this kind. It is precisely for this reason that the law against mercy killing, even for so-called compassionate motives, must stay firmly in place.

The Inglis judgment should send a strong signal that it is not acceptable to take another person’s life, even in desperation.

A woman from East London who was found guilty of murder after giving her brain-damaged son a lethal heroin injection to end his ‘living hell’ has lost an appeal against conviction.

Frances Inglis, 58, of Dagenham, was jailed for life with a minimum term of nine years at the Old Bailey in January.

Three judges at the Court of Appeal in London have rejected her conviction challenge, but reduced the minimum period she must serve before becoming eligible to apply for parole to five years.

Lord Judge said: ‘There is no doubt at all that the appellant was subjected to great stress and anguish, but dealing with it briefly and starkly, there was, as our analysis of the evidence underlines, not a scintilla of evidence that when the appellant injected the fatal dose of heroin into her son she had lost her self-control.’

Examining the concept of mercy killing in the ruling, he said: ‘We must underline that the law of murder does not distinguish between murder committed for malevolent reasons and murder motivated by familial love. Subject to well-established partial defences, like provocation or diminished responsibility, mercy killing is murder.’

Tom Inglis (22) suffered severe head injuries when he fell out of a moving ambulance in July 2007. His mother, who worked as a carer for disabled children, first tried to end his life two months after the accident when he was being treated at Queens Hospital in Romford, Essex. His heart stopped for six minutes but he was revived.

Prior to this incident Tom’s condition had been slowly improving to the extent that he was able to open his eyes and move his limbs. But according to Prosecutor Miranda Moore QC, his mother had come to the view that he would not get better and she wanted him to die.

The mother-of-three was charged with attempted murder before successfully trying again in November 2008 after barricading herself in her son’s room at the Gardens nursing home in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, and supergluing the door. Jurors returned majority verdicts of 10-2 and the trial judge told them that they could not have had ‘a more difficult case’.

At the recent appeal hearing, her QC Alan Newman told the judges that she feared her son would die in agony and gave him the injection to end his life ‘peacefully and painlessly’. Inglis believed he was in ‘constant pain’.

It was argued on her behalf that the trial judge should have left the issue of provocation to the jury. Referring to the fact that Inglis had not lost her self-control, Lord Judge said all the evidence was to the contrary. He said that far from lacking or losing self-control - an ‘essential’ ingredient for the defence of provocation - she was ‘completely in control of herself’. The judges ruled that her appeal against conviction was ‘not arguable’.

Lord Judge, in his summing up, gave a strong defence of the dignity and worth of all human life and made it crystal clear that it is not acceptable to make judgments about the worth or value of the life of another person and act on it in this way. He said:

‘The fact is that he was alive, a person in being. However brief the time left for him, that life could not lawfully be extinguished.

Similarly, however disabled Thomas might have been, a disabled life, even a life lived at the extremes of disability, is not one jot less precious than the life of an able-bodied person.

Thomas's condition made him especially vulnerable, and for that among other reasons, whether or not he might have died within a few months anyway, his life was protected by the law, and no one, not even his mother, could lawfully step in and bring it to a premature conclusion.’

The fundamental purpose of the law is to protect vulnerable people and this judgment is a very important restatement of the law.

The sentence of five years is actually very low for a murder charge reflecting the fact that the judges have clearly chosen to temper justice with mercy.

However it is most significant that whilst in possession of all the relevant material, they still considered a substantial period in custody as appropriate to the facts in this case.

The law prohibiting all intentional killing, including that for alleged compassionate motives, is clear and right. It provides a strong disincentive to abuse and exploitation whilst allowing judges discretion in sentencing to reflect the circumstances of the individual case. Disabled people will sleep more easily in their beds in the light of this judgment knowing that the law still offers them some protection.

This judgment should send a strong signal that it is not acceptable to take another person’s life, even in desperation.